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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



I 






At the Cossack picnic : stirring the cauldron of soup with birch 

branches. 



RUSSIA AND THE 
WORLD 

A STUDY OF THE WAR AND A STATEMENT 

OF THE WORLD-PROBLEMS THAT 

NOW CONFRONT RUSSIA 

AND GREAT BRITAIN 



BY 



STEPHEN GRAHAM 

AUTHOR OF "WITH POOR IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA" 

"WITH RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM" 

ETC. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1915 

AU rights reserved 



]0K %u^ 



Copyright, 1915, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotypcd. Published March, 1915. Reprinted 
September, 1915. 



By transfer 
U. S, Soldiers Horn* Lib. *. 
MAR 18 1938 



NnriDoolr ^rtss 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CG:9S0t£jj 



INTRODUCTION 

In December, 191 3, when I was just returning to 
Russia after my tramp in America, The London Times 
came forward and put its columns at my disposal, and 
I was able to record my impressions there throughout 
the whole of the year. During the winter I was seeking 
words and stories and impressions that would convey 
better the idea of Russia as the great religious force 
of Europe : Russia the sanctuary from Westernism. 
My first articles dealt with the religion of Russia, the 
meeting of old friends, the idea of sanctuary. I visited 
many old friends of whom I have written in my books 
before — Pereplotchikof , the Russian painter, with 
whom I spent a summer in the forests of Archangel; 
Loosha, whom I met at Batum ; Varvara Ilinitchna, 
of the cottage with the Chinese wall at Gelendzhik, on 
the Black Sea shore; the old grandmother at Vladi- 
kavkaz, to whom I brought a crown of thorns and a 
cross after my pilgrimage to Jerusalem. My first 
letters home were from Moscow, Kief, Vladikavkaz, 
and other towns. 

But with the coming of spring the road tempted me, 
and I set out on the longest and most difficult tramp I 



vi INTRODUCTION 

had yet attempted — across Russian Central Asia to 
the frontier of China and the south of Central Siberia. 
I went by train as far as the road would take me, and 
then went on with pack on back. I visited Bokhara, 
Samarakand, and Tashkent, those wondrous cities 
which Russia possesses on the northern side of Afghanis- 
tan in the Hindu-Koosh. Towards the end of May I 
set out across the Kirghiz steppes, through Sindaria 
and Seven Rivers Land, and saw many scores of new 
Russian villages and irrigated farms in this the young- 
est of Russian colonies. I was continually with the 
pioneers of Russian emigration — the endless caravan of 
ox-drawn or pony-drawn carts carrying all the goods 
and families of Russians going to the remote East in 
search of land. It was an interesting tramp, but very 
hot, very trying. The sun beat down on the desert, 
and for days there was never a tree, not even a palm 
tree, under which to shelter. It is a land full of big 
game, many tigers, many panthers, ibex, antelope. 
There are many serpents, many eagles and vultures 
and huge bustards. There are also myriads of creatures 
of the desert — tortoises, marmottes, dust beetles. 

I reached the posts of what is nominally the boundary 
line of Mongolia, and passed through many Cossack 
settlements by Kopal, Lepsinsk, and Lake Maiman to 
Semipalatinsk. At Semipalatinsk, where, by the by, 
Dostoieffsky suffered part of his exile to Siberia, I came 
into touch with civilisation, received a stack of letters 



INTRODUCTION vii 

and newspapers, among other things, read of the assas- 
sination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his bride and 
of the consequent punitive expedition of the Austrians. 
It seemed a serious matter to me then, and I wondered 
whether things might not be more interesting to me if 
I returned to the more western parts of Russia, but I 
was loth to forgo the prospect of resting through late 
July and August in the Altai — those magnificent pine- 
covered snow-crested mountains that divide Siberia 
from China, and give birth to those wondrous rivers 
of Asia, the Irtish and the Yenisei. I went south to 
Malo-Kranoyark, and then alongside the main Altai 
range and over the green hills up to the highlands of 
Katun Karagai. And there, whilst living in a Cossack 
station, I heard the barely credible intelligence that 
there was war. 

No one could say with whom there was war, but 
there certainly was war with some one. It was a terrible 
moment when I heard that Germany had declared war 
on Russia, but it was tempered by the fact that I could 
hardly believe the news to be true. Still, with the call 
to arms my vagabondage in Central Asia came to an 
end for the time being. So the war came across my 
little thread of life. 

This book takes up my story on the day of mobilisa- 
tion on the Altai Mountains. At first I thought of 
including the whole of the year's experience and 
thought, and the impressions of my Central Asian 



viii INTRODUCTION 

journey in one book with my pictures and thoughts 
of the war. But I have thought it better to put aside 
the earher matter, as hardly relevant to the immediate 
question of how the war is affecting Russia and how 
Russia stands in relation to the nations she protects and 
to the world in general. Some time later I hope to 
return to the Altai village and resume my wanderings 
where I left off, and when I have crossed Siberia may 
perhaps present a personal impression of the Russian 
Empire. 

As regards the spelling of Russian and Polish names 
I have kept to the rule of spelling according to sound. 
This was followed in my articles, but The Times fol- 
lowing a tradition preferred to change my Chenstokhof 
into Czestochowa and so on. It would be well if the 
press as a whole would spell according to sound and 
Przemysl became simply Pshemisl as it is pronounced, 

and so on. 

S. G. 

February, 191 5. 



CONTENTS 

WAR 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. How THE News of War Came to a Village on 

THE Chinese Frontier i 

II. The Journey from the Altai Mountains to 

Moscow 9 

III. The Englishman 15 

IV. In Moscow 19 

V. Why Russia is Fighting 36 

VI. Is IT A Last War? 42 

VII. Autumn Leaves 47 

VIII. The Economic Isolation of Russia • • • 53 

IX. On the River Niemen 58 

X. An Aeroplane Hunt in Warsaw .... 65 

XL The First Battle of Warsaw .... 74 

XI 1. The Day of Victory 80 

XIII. Suffering Poland : A Belgium of the East . 85 

XIV. The Censorship 91 

XV. The Soldier and the Cross ] 95 

XVI. School Children 100 

XVII. Trophies 105 

XVIII. The Evergreens Remain no 

NATIONS 

I. Russians 119 

II. The Germans 135 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

III. The Future of the Poles 143 

IV. The Future of the Jews 154 

V. Turks 170 

VI. Americans 179 

INDIVIDUALS 

I. The Great White Tsar . . . . . .185 

II. M. Sazonof , .192 

POLICIES 

I. The Vodka Prohibition 201 

II. Distrust of Russia or Friendship with Russia . 213 

III. The Settlement of Peace 222 

IV. Arbitration 230 

V. The Future of the Russian Empire . . . 236 

VI. The Future of the British Empire . . . 269 

VII. Naturalis>^,tion 274 

VIII. Conscription 276 

LAST THOUGHTS 

I. Petrograd 283 

II. Returning from Russia to England . . .288 

III. Not Too Loud 302 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



At the Cossack picnic : stirring the cauldron of soup with birch 

branches Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Cossack bringing his fur coat to the revision of kit . . . 4 

The Altai Village-church 44 

Making the sign of the Cross with holy water on each Cossack's 

head. The priest is using paint-brush 92 

Carrying the village ikons to the Cossacks' Consecration Service 148 
Dancing round the Rouble : Cossack shows the Tsar's head on 
the silver coin, while the others sing the National Anthem 

and dance round 194 

Hoisting the Ataman at the mobilisation. The Cossacks also 
came to the author and said : ^^ Posvoltye vas raskatchat — 

permit us to give you a swing " 252 

On the way to the point of mobilisation : 1,000 miles from the 
nearest railway station ; 4,000 miles from the battlefields of 
Poland 278 



*' And He who sat upon the throne said : ^Behold, 
I make all things new' '* 



I 

WAR 



RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 
I. WAR 



How THE News of War came to a Village on 
THE Chinese Frontier 

I WAS staying in an Altai Cossack village on the 
frontier of Mongolia when the war broke out, 1,200 
versts south of the Siberian railway, a most verdant 
resting-place, with majestic fir forests, snow-crowned 
mountains range behind range, green and purple val- 
leys deep in larkspur and monkshood. All the young 
men and women of the village were out on the grassy 
hills with scythes; the children gathered currants in 
the wood each day, old folks sat at home and sewed 
furs together, the pitch-boilers and charcoal-burners 
worked at their black fires with barrels and scoops, 
and athwart it all came the message of war. 

At 4 A.M. on July 31st the first telegram came through, 
an order to mobilise and be prepared for active service. 
I was awakened that morning by an unusual commo- 
tion, and, going into the village street, saw the soldier 
population collected in groups, talking excitedly. My 



2 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

peasant hostess cried out to me, "Have you heard the 
news? There is war/' A young man on a fine horse 
came galloping down the street, a great red flag hanging 
from his shoulders and flapping in the wind, and as he 
went he called out the news to each and every one, 
'^War! Warr' 

Horses out, uniforms, swords ! The village feldscher 
took his stand outside our one Government building, 
the volostnoe pravlenie, and began to examine horses. 
The Tsar had called on the Cossacks; they gave up 
their work without a regret and burned to fight the 
enemy. 

Who was the enemy? Nobody knew. The tele- 
gram contained no indications. All the village popu- 
lation knew was that the same telegram had come as 
came ten years ago, when they were called to fight the 
Japanese. Rumours abounded. All the morning it 
was persisted that the yellow peril had matured, and 
that the war was with China. Russia had pushed too 
far into Mongolia, and China had declared war. 

The village priest, who spoke Esperanto and claimed 
that he had never met anyone else in the world who 
spoke the language, came to me and said : 

"What think you of Kaiser Wilhelm's picture?" 

"What do you mean?'' I asked. 

"Why, the yellow peril!" 

Then a rumour went round, "It is with England, 
with England." So far away these people lived they 



THE NEWS OF WAR 3 

did not know that our old hostiKty had vanished. 
Only after four days did something like the truth come 
to us, and then nobody believed it. 

"An immense war," said a peasant to me. "Thir- 
teen powers engaged — England, France, Russia, Bel- 
gium, Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, Albania, against 
Germany, Austria, Italy, Roumania, Turkey.'' 

Two days after the first telegram a second came, and 
this one called up every man between the ages of 18 
and 43. Astonishing that Russia should at the very 
outset begin to mobilise its reservists 5,000 versts from 
the scene of hostilities ! 

Flying messengers arrived on horses, breathless and 
steaming, and delivered packets into the hands of the 
Atafnan, the head-man of the Cossacks — the secret 
instructions. Fresh horses were at once given them, 
and they were off again within five minutes of their 
arrival in the village. The great red flag was mounted 
on an immense pine-pole at the end of our one street, 
and at night it was taken down and a large red lantern 
was hung in its place. At the entrance of every vil- 
lage such a flag flew by day, such a lantern by night. 

The preparations for departure went on each day, 
and I spent much time watching the village vet. certi- 
fying or rejecting mounts. A horse that could not go 
fifty miles a day was not passed. Each Cossack 
brought his horse up, plucked its lips apart to show 
the teeth, explained marks on the horse's body. 



4 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

mounted it bareback and showed its paces. The 
examination was strict ; the Cossacks had a thousand 
miles to go to get to the railway at Omsk. It was 
necessary to have strong horses. 

On the Saturday night there was a melancholy 
service in the wooden village church. The priest, in 
a long sermon, looked back over the history of Holy 
Russia, dwelling chiefly on the occasion when Napoleon 
defiled the churches of "Old Mother Moscow, '^ and was 
punished by God. "God is with us," said the priest. 
"Victory will be ours.'' 

Sunday was a hoHday, and no preparations were 
made that day. On Monday the examination of 
horses went on. The Cossacks brought also their 
uniforms, swords, hats, hah-shubas, overcoats, shirts, 
boots, belts — aU that they were supposed to provide 
in the way of kit, and the Ataman checked and certified 
each soldier's portion. 

On Thursday, the day of setting out, there came a 
third telegram from St. Petersburg. The vodka-shop, 
which had been locked and sealed during the great 
temperance struggle which had been in progress in 
Russia, might be opened for one day only — the day 
of mobilisation. After that day, however, it was to 
be closed again and remain closed until further orders. 

What scenes there were that day ! 

All the men of the village had become soldiers and 
pranced on their horses. At eight o'clock in the morn- 




00 

'5b 

G 



THE NEWS OF WAR 5 

ing the holy- water basin was taken from the church 
and placed with triple candles on the open, sun-blazed 
mountain side. The Cossacks met there as at a ren- 
dezvous, and all their women-folk, in multifarious 
bright cotton dresses and tear-stained faces, walked 
out to say a last religious good-bye. 

The bare-headed, long-haired priest came out in vest- 
ment of violent blue, and behind him came the old men 
of the village carrying the ikons and banners of the 
church; after them the village choir, singing as they 
marched. A strange mingling of sobbing and singing 
went up to heaven from the crowd outside the wooden 
village, this vast irregular collection of women on foot 
clustered about a long double line of stalwart horsemen. 

The consecration service took place, and only then 
did we learn the almost incredible fact that the war was 
with Germany. It made the hour and the act and the 
place even more poignant. I at least understood what 
it meant to go to war against Germany, and the destiny 
that was in store. 

"God is with you,'' said the priest in his sermon, 
the tears running down his face the while. "God is 
with you ; not a hair of your heads will be lost. Never 
turn your backs on the foe. Remember that if you do 
you endanger the eternal welfare of your souls. Re- 
member, too, that a letter, a post card — one line — 
will be greedily read by all of us who remain behind. 
. . . God bless his faithful slaves!" 



6 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

When the lesson was read there was a great scramble 
among the soldiers to get their heads underneath the 
Bible. They looked true ^'slaves of God," these sol- 
diers on their knees in the blazing sunlight, the great 
Bible on their very heads. 

Each soldier dismounted and prostrated himself in 
the prayers ; each soldier at the last kissed the cross in 
the priest^s hand, and was anointed on the brow with 
holy water. 

And when anointed he passed away from the priest, 
leading his horse by the bridle. He sought out mother 
and wife in the waiting throng, embraced them, and 
was blessed amidst sobbings that wrung the heart. 

"They'll be back soon !" says one woman. 

"Oh you don't know, you don't know," repHes an- 
other in distraction. 

Away ! Away ! Two miles from the village an ox 
had been killed and was being cooked by the side of 
the road, and gallon bottles of vodka waited in the 
grass. The soldiers got into saddle again and rode out 
through the crowds of women, old men, and children. 
And a great number followed them to the place of 
picnic. 

The ox was cooked over a great fire by the river- 
side, the green birches withering in the smoke. The 
Cossacks came up quickly, and getting down from their 
horses tied them to the trees. Buckets and kettles and 
glasses were brought forth from a shed, also many 



THE NEWS OF WAR 7 

plates, but no tables. There was soup and roast beef 
and vodka for all comers. First of all the gallon bottles 
of spirit were emptied into the buckets and kettles and 
distributed among the men, the men themselves officiat- 
ing. There were drinks all round, and healths to the 
Tsar, and to Russia, and to themselves. Whilst the 
vodka was being thus purveyed cauldrons were receiv- 
ing attention, and directly the toasts were drunk the 
soup was dealt out, each man holding his plate as he 
stood and putting his lips to the hot Hquid, blowing it, 
and trying to drink it ; there were no spoons. Meat 
was carved and taken promiscuously to eat, and then 
the vodka was finished. Only a very limited quantity 
had been supplied, but enough to inflame the emotion- 
alised souls of men so lately taken through a moving 
rehgious ceremony, so lately touched to tears by the 
farewell to home. 

One man held up a rouble, showing the Emperor^s 
face, and all the soldiers sang "God Save the Tsar,'' 
and then danced round the coin. 

The Ataman was taken, hoisted shoulder-high, and 
thrown three times into the air, and caught again with 
cheers — a great, stout, bearded mihtary official. A 
number of soldiers even came up to me and laid their 
hands on me, saying, — ^^ PozvoUye Vas raskatchat — 
Let's give you a swing." 

I had difficulty in getting away. 



8 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

The roaring little river rushed along under the birch 
trees, the horses waited in the green shade, the men 
danced and sang, the women sobbed and keened. 
There was an hour of it, and then the officer in 
command gave the word, and all the men were in the 
stirrup again. The long journey and farewell began 
in earnest. Even so, women on horseback accom- 
panied their husbands twenty or thirty miles and 
then said good-bye, and even watched them out of 
sight as they dipped with their dust into the horizon. 

So Russia sent off her men from the frontier of 
MongoKa to fight on the far-off plains of Austria and 
Poland. 



II 

The Journey from the Altai Mountains to 

Moscow 

The day after the setting out of the Cossacks from 
their Altai village on the Mongohan frontier I decided 
to follow — hiring first the post and then the zemsky 
horses. It was like following a reaping. Wherever I 
went all the ablebodied men had gone before me ; there 
were only old men, women and children remaining. 
Boys of twelve and thirteen were in charge of the 
Government horses, women who could neither read 
nor write had charge of the post-stations. Greybeards 
worked with girls in the haymaking fields. Outside 
every village hung by day the red flag of war ; every 
night, a great red lantern with baleful light. 

A fine journey along the corridors of the Altai ranges, 
from settlement to settlement, through prairie grass, a 
warm wind blowing all the day, a golden moon coming 
up out of China to rule in the night. The heart 
trembled at the thought of war, but all around was the 
indifierent peace of a remote country. It was tanta- 
lising to look at this glowing Altai moon, so placid and 
perfect, and to feel that four thousand miles away the 



lo RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

destinies of Europe were being settled on the field of 
battle. 

How slow was my progess. After four days I got 
on a river steamer, packed with reservists, and started 
the long river journey down the Irtish to Semipalatinsk 
and Omsk. The cabins of the boat were occupied by 
officers, the deck by the soldiers, and civil passengers 
of whatever description were put in the holds with the 
cargo, the men fore, the women aft. Doctors, peasants, 
engineers, fishermen, Civil Servants, farmers, found 
themselves cheek by cheek and knee by knee, trying 
to sleep on sacks of rye and trusses of hay. But there 
was no grumbhng ; everyone understood that it was 
"soldiers first." 

We stayed all night at Ust-Kamenygorsk. There 
was a hurricane of wind and drenching rain. No one 
on board the ship slept, but all sat and looked serious, 
while soldiers stood about in their cloaks, and the pale 
lights of the ships shimmered on black bayonets. Next 
morning we were played off by a military band. There 
was a crowd as if the whole female population of the 
town had come out to see us off ; and as the National 
Anthem was played the sobs of mothers and wives 
mingled in unison with the music as we beat the water 
into foam and steamed away. 

All the way to Semipalatinsk the women came out 
from the villages and lined the riverside to see us — not 
to sell things, as in time of peace, but to give. We 



JOURNEY FROM ALTAI TO MOSCOW ii 

stopped nowhere, but came gently alongside the village 
landing-places; and as we did so the women flung 
aboard their gifts to the soldiers — 5 lb. loaves, cucum- 
bers, red melons, cooked fish — crying and shouting 
the while. Many loaves and fishes had adventurous 
passages in their flight from the shore to the boat. 
How good that this personal sort of charity is still 
deep in Russia, not dried up ! In the old days when 
the Siberian prisoners were marched from village to 
village to the mines the population of the villages used 
to turn out and befriend them in just such a way. To- 
day in Moscow I see how the people of the towns wait 
at the stations for the ambulance trains and carry their 
gifts to the captive and wounded — personally. Even 
to the German prisoners of war. 

There was a great deal of feasting and merriment 
on board the boat, though no vodka or beer. The 
stove in the general kitchen was always covered with 
pots, and in the pots were fish, eggs, chickens, mutton. 
There was eating and talking, and music and dancing. 
When at Semipalatinsk we were transferred to the 
much larger steamer Andrew the First-Called y there was 
dancing all night. 

On the deck of Andrew the First-Called we had a 
thousand passengers, half of whom were reservists, the 
other half a medley of delayed Siberian passengers : 
Chinamen on the way to Peking, Chinese Tartars, 
Siberian Tartars, gangs of labourers, colonists, school- 



12 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

teachers going home from their holiday in the Altai, 
students going to the universities, a party of Caucasian 
pioneers returning to Alagir, near Vladikavkaz; five 
Ossetine tribesmen, who, strange to say, had been in 
Canada and who spoke broken English, and were of 
opinion that Siberia was "no good country'' ; a family 
of Ziriani going back to their home on the Petchora. 
In every corner and on every table rolled canteloupes 
and mushmelons, giving colours of gold and emerald to 
the monotony of Siberian rags. We were a long-haired, 
non-shaven lot of people. I myself had a month's hair 
on my face. We were in bark boots, in jackboots, in 
bare and dirty feet. We had many "hares" on board 
— ticketless passengers, tramps, tatterdemalions, men 
of the runaway convict type, beggars, thieves. 

I lay in the midst of them all and slept not. An 
orchestra was formed of two men with concertinas, 
three with fiddles, and one with a mouth organ, and 
even at three in the morning the musicians were 
surrounded by a great crowd of men ; some on sacks, 
some standing on benches and tables, some hanging 
on from rafters in the roof above, cheering, shouting, 
singing, as men couples went through the extraordinary 
dumb show of the popular dances, coming towards one 
another or retiring, averting their faces, shrugging 
their shoulders, hunching their backs, slipping down, 
and dancing as it were on hips and heels, springing up 
again, kissing one another on the lips. 



JOURNEY FROM ALTAI TO MOSCOW 13 

Besides myself there was another EngHshman on 
board, a mining expert who had come down from 
one of the mines which used to be worked by the 
convicts, but which a British company is now exploit- 
ing. Five hundred of his labourers had been taken 
away for the war ; the mines would perhaps have to 
close down. The company's stock must have depre- 
ciated 50 per cent. It was the same with all the other 
mining concerns. The Englishman, however, was 
cheerful. Optimism had always carried him through. 
He was stiU an optimist. By the time we got to Omsk 
it would be arbitration. "Arbitration," said he, 
"that's what it will be." A Russian officer, over- 
hearing our talk and learning that we were English, 
lifted his hat to us. 

What animation there was at Omsk ; soldiers gallop- 
ing about or leading horses to and from the river, great 
companies of reservists in rags, free dining-places for 
reservists' families, companies of soldiers in new attire 
and with new rifles, squads of men drilling on the sands, 
train after train packed with soldiers, all the red Sibe- 
rian goods trucks emptied of the merchandise of peace, 
and full of guns, saddles, oats, hay ; laden with military 
carts and wagons, with soldiers and horses ! 

I was appreciably nearer the war, but stiU far away. 
The railway line was blocked for passenger service, 
and it was only in the slowest, slowest manner that I 
made the 2,000-mile journey west to Moscow, passing 



14 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

through the endless forests of Tobolsk, Perm, Viatka, 
Kostroma, Vologda, tasting the sodden stillness of the 
pine woods, picking up little contingents of reservists 
at village stations, listening to the sobbing of women 
saying "good-bye," watching military goods trains go 
past us, waiting hours, waiting whole nights to go on, 
the only diversion the telegrams for sale at the railway 
stations, the news of the doings of the armies. 



Ill 

The Englishman 

I MET the Englishman at Semipalatinsk, the miserable 
sandswept Siberian town where, for many years, Dos- 
toieffsky was confined. I was wandering from the 
quay up to the town hoping to get a current news- 
paper to read, when suddenly, to my surprise, a man 
in a cart cried out to me in my own tongue, the words : 
"Speak English?'' 

"Why, yes," said L "How did you guess?" 

" I saw you reading an old copy of The Times yester- 
day, but I thought probably you didn't know much 
and it wouldn't be worth while speaking to you." 

"You were on the Mongol?'^ 

"Yes, I got in at Ust-Kamennigorsk coming down 
from a mine." R 

"I suppose you know the news, England has de- 
clared war also." 

"What! Is she at it?" 

"Yes, it's England, France and Russia against Ger- 
many and Austria." 

"No? But it won't last." 

"There's no going home across Germany." 

15 



i6 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

"No?'' 

"I don't suppose there's any sailing from Baltic 
ports." 

"No. But it can't last. It'll be arbitration." 

The mining engineer seemed perturbed. I went on 
to the town, he returned to the boat after a night in a 
hotel. We met later on Andrew the First-Called and 
we had many talks. A very able man of middle years, 
at once prosaic and sentimental, having soft blue eyes 
ready to shed tears, faded hair and heavyish body. 
He was homesick for England, and talked ever of his 
wife and his little girl living in a cosy home in one of 
our western seaports. 

*' Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay 
And I wish from my heart it was there I was to-day. 
I wish from my heart I was far away from here 
Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear." 

Yet the stirring scenes of the Russian mobilisation 
and the sobbing of the women touched him, and he 
told me that up country he had seen sights no man 
could face unmoved. 

His first feeling about the war and England's part in 
it was irritation, but as I read him extracts from the 
sheafs of Government telegrams I had procured at 
Semipalatinsk Town Hall, he was moved with the 
spirit of adventure, and he told me of many things 
that had happened to him whilst prospecting in Nigeria 
and Ashanti; how he discovered a cliff of anthracite 



THE ENGLISHMAN 17 

and wanted to take up an option on the working of it 
but the Government forestalled him ; how he was once 
reported dead, and came home to read his obituary 
notice and find his wife in black. 

He held that the Russian Empire was stronger than 
the British Empire because of the lack of education in 
Russia. Education always made for disintegration. 
The educated man nearly always wanted to sacrifice 
something else to himself and his own education. He 
was not ready to make sacrifices for a larger ideal. 

But the engineer believed in the English, especially 
in contrast with Americans. The Americans always 
think they can outdo other people in the rest of the 
world by hustling. He told me how up at the mine 
there were two Americans who tried "to get a move 
on the labourers'' by showing an example and taking 
pick and shovel themselves. 

"The men all stood round and laughed and let the 
Americans work. No, the way to get Kirghiz and 
Russians to work is to make a game of it, and knock a 
man's hat off now and then and joke about it." 

A cheerful, optimistic Briton. Once he lost £12,000 
on an investment in American rails and he felt very 
down in spirits. 

"I might have saved £8,500 by selling out when I 
wanted to, but my broker said ^Hold on till morning 
and you'll double.' Next morning I was broke. I did 
not let my wife know. I went about London all day 



i8 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

miserable. I always occupy the same room at the 
^ Cecil/ In the evening I went along to the Gaiety 
Theatre. I sat in the stalls and stared at the piece but 
couldn't take it in, I was so upset by the money I'd 
lost. After the show I met an old acquaintance who 
asked me into Romano's for supper. There by chance 
1 met Edmund Payne, Gertie Millar, her husband and 
some others. Gertie Millar asked me how I liked the 
piece. I replied that it seemed pretty good, but my 
mind was wandering all the time. 

"'Why, what's the matter?' said she, and she looked 
at me so kindly and seriously I could see she under- 
stood, and she put her hand on my knee and said words 
that I shall never forget : — 

" ' Laugh and the world laughs with you, 
Weep and you weep alone.' 

"Next day I won £1,500 back on a thousand pound 
margin on Ashantis. 

" So I say it'll be arbitration. I shall get home from 
St. Petersburg in three days, through the Kiel Canal. 
Have you ever seen the canal? No? You ought to. 
I've only seen it once and that was at night. But I 
stayed up all night looking at it. It's a magnificent 
piece of engineering." 



IV 
IN MOSCOW 

There is one characteristic in the life of a young 
man ; it is that no matter what happens, good results 
to him thereby. Luck, so called, is much more on 
the side of the young man than on the side of the old. 
What hair-breadth escapes he has, what calamities he 
faces, what hardships he undergoes. Yet he emerges 
more powerful, more experienced. Indeed, danger and 
privation are more beneficial to him than peace and 
happiness. Russia is for the moment our young man, 
with all his destiny before him. He has come through 
the Japanese War, the great revolutionary danger, he 
is now in the depths of his third and greatest struggle. 
All goes to the makiag of mighty Russia. 

So, when I got back to Moscow in September, 19 14, 
I foimd no depression of the national spirit in Russia ; 
no strikes, no riots, no revolutionary propaganda or 
pessimism, but instead an all-pervading cheerfulness 
and national unanimity which even the most optimistic 
could not have foreseen. The peasants go to the front 
with great enthusiasm ; and the intelligentsia, Radical 
and Conservative alike, cheer them on. The news- 

19 



20 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

papers of all parties are at one, and the Liberal organs 
are as loyal as those of the extreme Right. There is 
the same unanimity among the Poles and the Jews — 
Jewish volunteer regiments have even been formed. 
The only sympathy with Germany lies in the breasts 
of the Finns ; the only instinct to fall into brigandage 
and rebellion is among the Mohammedan tribesmen 
of the Caucasus. All is well, and if success crowns 
the Russian arms, the empire will become bound in 
happy allegiance to the Tsar as never before. On the 
other hand, if the Germans gain the upper hand, and 
inflict vast slaughter, the presence of millions of armed 
Russians in Western Russia is pregnant with danger 
for all who have property and culture and position 
there. This war is a matter of hfe and death for 
Russian civilisation, as it is for all the other States 
engaged. 

The air is full of hope. All vodka shops have been 
closed, and Russia at a word from the Tsar has taken 
on the appearance of sobriety. It has been impossible 
to obtain alcoholic liquors of any kind, and as a con- 
sequence drunkenness has disappeared from the streets, 
and with it a great army of beggars who only beg that 
they may gather twenty kopeks for a bottle. The 
absence of vodka made a great blank in the peasants' 
lives, but that blank has been filled up by the war and 
the interest of the war. Ordinarily the peasants feel 
they have nothing to do but drink, but now it is other- 



IN MOSCOW 21 

wise. It is as if in war they found a real reason for 
existence, as if in death they found the object of Hving. 
It is difficult to reconcile war with our Western Chris- 
tianity, but the Church of Russia finds no difficulty — 
going to the war is laying one's body on the altar of 
sacrifice. In the fine rage of the Russian soldiers 
going to meet the foe Hes the thrill of exultation in the 
souls of martyrs going to glorious death. 

My ears ache with the sound of women's sobs. All 
the way from the peaceful and happy villages of the 
Altai the sounds of waiHng and crying broke upon my 
ears. Here, however, in Moscow it is different : some- 
one has wiped away their tears, and the women with 
sunshiny, if tear-stained, faces, are feverishly working 
for the thousands of wounded who have come back for 
their care, cutting Hnen and sewing bandages, collect- 
ing money, organising hospitals. There are many 
wounded in Moscow. All the pubHc hospitals and 
infirmaries are filled, all the private hospitals. Scores 
of large private houses, such as that of Prince Gagarin 
on the Novinsky Boulevard and Mme. Morozof's, on 
the Vozdvizhenka, are turned into lazaretti — honey- 
combs of nursing chambers and beds; or into Hnen 
warehouses or workshops for bandage cutting and 
roUing. The streets are thronged with Red Cross 
sisters ; in every house women are thinking v/hat they 
can do personally for the wounded, how many they can 
take to nurse. Alas ! we are only at the beginning of 



22 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

sorrow. Even all the care and thought of those at 
home will be little to meet the suffering. 

Love for the soldiers is hysterical. At the railway 
stations where the wounded arrive, wait large crowds 
of women with baskets of gifts; and when the huge 
cross-marked, comfortable ambulance train comes in 
and stops, there is a new and sweet invasion — all the 
girls running along the corridors with cigarettes, with 
tea and sugar, and cakes and newspapers. 

Even on wet evenings the dense, uncomplaining 
crowd waits for the wounded and the prisoners, and, 
as the great red cross of the slowly approaching am- 
bulance train looms through the darkness you may hear 
sad whispered exclamations among the crowd — ^^ Lord! 
Lord!'' 

Even the German wounded participate in the general 
hospitality, and you frequently hear a Russian woman 
say of the wounded enemy before her, "Poor one; is 
it his fault that he is fighting us?" The Germans, for 
their part, are very suspicious, asking of the tea, "Is 
it not vitriol?" refusing to take medicine, and asking 
"When are we to be hung?" 

The streets of the city present many sights — the 
marching of soldiers, the endless stream of the army 
moving out of the depths of Russia to the war ; a mag- 
nificent peasantry, brought in some cases from the 
remotest places of the Old World. They sing as they 
march, they lift their hats and shout as they go, cheer- 



IN MOSCOW 23 

ing for the war. In the midst of their number are many 
peasant women, wives who refuse to be parted from 
their husbands, and they help to carry the immense 
baggage. 

As a contrast, there are long processions of German 
and Austrian prisoners, looking very sulky and tired; 
men in battered helmets, rent clothes, cavalrymen with- 
out horses, foot-soldiers with the dust and blood of 
the battlefield unremoved. Russians guard them with 
drawn swords on their shoulders, the populace runs 
alongside and laughs and criticises. " W^at small men ! 
Wilhelm promised they should come to Moscow, and 
they've come !" 

No malice, however, seems to be borne the prisoners. 
On the contrary, they are shown a great deal of kind- 
ness. Sausage is provided for them and German news- 
papers. Many people ask, "Is it not dull for you 
here?'' "Not so dull if only there were beer," is the 
reply. 

Or, as upon the festival of Dmitri Donskoi, there 
come men with horns, men with bells and with gongs, 
making a great din, and criers shouting, and pantech- 
nicon vans attended by society ladies, merchants' wives, 
and pretty actresses. Into these vans you throw what- 
ever you fancy, promiscuously. Bright girls come into 
your lodgings and you give them all the old clothes 
you don't want, or the new warm things you have pre- 
pared for the occasion and they take them and throw 



24 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

them into the vans ; people just coming out of shops 
with parcels in their hands throw the parcels into the 
vans on the impulse. The vans go to the richest and 
to the poorest streets. From the poorest they take 
even rags and tatters ; all can be put to use in the ser- 
vice of the soldiers who, perchance, have to go through 
a cold winter in the trenches. 

There are frequent hurrahs on the streets as motor- 
cars tear past mth wounded men being taken to the 
hospitals. Outside all the places to which for the time 
being wounded are being carried there are crowds wait- 
ing. When the cars stop at the hospital door there is 
a chorus of cheers and exclamations: Bravo! Molotsi! 
(fine fellows). Spaseho! (thanks); and the soldiers 
answer, '^ Cheer up, we're winning!" 

I visit Pereplotchikof and find him looking much 
older, as if the autumn of hfe had breathed over the 
summer of his prime. But he is very active, and has 
a dozen war notebooks in his pocket. He spent the 
summer quietly in a village on the Northern D\^dna, 
and when the war broke out returned directly to Mos- 
cow. He saw the Tsar, as also did my LiavHa friend, 
Alexey Sergeitch,* but now a Liberal tutor in a prince's 
house. The unguarded Tsar was as free and cheerful 
in Moscow as if he had never heard of revolutions, 
nihihsts, assassins. 

* One of the revolutionaries mentioned in "Undiscovered Russia." 
Varvara Sergevna, his sister, is a Red Cross nurse now. 



IN MOSCOW 25 

With the outbreak of the war, Hterature and art came 
to an end. "I am no longer a painter," says Pereplo- 
tchikof. "I have ahnost forgotten that I used to paint 
pictures/' Pereplotchikof serves on six committees for 
the care of the wounded. Maxim Gorky has volun- 
teered to go to the front with the Red Cross. The 
author of "Jealousy" and "Sanin" works at the Brest 
Station all day like a porter, carrying wounded soldiers 
from the just-arrived Red Cross trains to the am- 
bulances and motor-cars and Red Cross trams waiting 
to convey them to the hospitals. Nothing is now more 
familiar than the double-coach Red Cross tramcars 
gliding slowly along the iron ways, full of wounded, 
the first coach with plain glass, full of those lightly 
injured, the second with ground glass, but open win- 
dows, showing a dozen or twenty upper and lower beds 
laden with the heavily wounded. 

All the doss-houses, and many schools and churches, 
are occupied by the wounded. People of all ranks in 
society are working together for their care. As I sit 
with Pereplotchikof, the telephone bell rings. It is to 
say that a certain big doss-house is much in need of 
Bibles and books of a religious character, a few gramo- 
phones are asked for; and some women might help, 
reading aloud, writing letters, and chatting to the 
illiterate. The nurses have all their spare time occupied 
in writing love-letters to the soldiers' sweethearts. 

I accompanied my friend to the doss-house, an 



26 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

immense building near the Riazansky Station. The 
chief doctor showed me round. I expected to see a 
very mournful spectacle, but was agreeably surprised. 
Not one in twenty of the wounded was lying in his 
bed. Every hall was full of gaiety and life ; the sol- 
diers walking about in their white undergarments, 
talking, reading, laughing, playing cards; men with 
bandaged legs, bandaged hands, heads, bodies, with 
their bare feet stuck into hospital slippers. 

The doctor, who confessed to a great admiration for 
the English, took me into the operating room, a place 
of blood and disinfectant ; into the bandaging room, 
where a young soldier was having his arm tied up anew ; 
into the big basement hall, where the daily cabbage 
soup is served out. 

"WTiat has happened to the tramps and beggars 
who used to sleep here o' nights?" I asked. 

'^ There are fewer of them," said the doctor. "Since 
the sale of vodka stopped and the war began, the old 
night population seems to have vanished. I do not 
know how much good the war will ultimately bring, 
but the sobriety which it has already brought would 
justify it." 

The wounded are full of their impressions of the 
war and of Germany, and they talk readily. Thus: 
"Germany is a fine country, no comparison with our 
poor villages — stone houses, brick houses, three 
storeys, fine carpets, chairs, gramophones. Every 



IN MOSCOW 27 

house has a gramophone, and we all learned how to 
set them going. One day, I had just come into a 
house and set a gramophone going, when an officer 
puts his head into the broken window and says, ^Stop 
that music at once ! ' I didn't know how to stop it, so I 
just hits it, hifj in the middle of the wheel and it goes 
into bits all over the room. Then they have fiddles, 
and every house has a big black box with a lid (piano), 
and when you open the lid and bang it with your hand 
it goes ^hir, hir, hir ; ho, ho, ho.'' 

"Is there plenty to eat?" "Yes, pigs, as many as 
you like. We had roast German pork every day; 
hundreds, thousands of pigs. We caught them and 
carried them to the camp." The wounded man hunts 
in the sack by his bedside and brings out a murderous 
looking knife. "That's what the Germans kill them 
with," he says. 

Many wounded have trophies taken from the dead 
and from the houses of the ransacked villages — 
watches, rings, guns ; one we saw had a bracelet. A 
wounded officer whom we met at another place told us 
how the streets of the German towns were strewn with 
books, gramophones, vases, silver-plate, white piano 
keys in handfuls, but no pictures, no statues. The 
soldiers never touch any pictures, not even that of the 
Emperor William — sa3dng merely of him as they look 
at his picture on the wall : "How the ends of his mous- 
tache are turned up!" "We'll turn them down for 



28 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

him, eh brothers ? " The wounded are always asked — 
"Do the Germans fight well?" and they answer, "Yes, 
like dogs"; or "Not with the bayonet. They carry 
their bayonets in their belts; we always have ours 
fixed and ready. They are afraid of the hand-to-hand 
struggle. They think the Cossacks are devils who 
live far away in the forests like savages, Hving on raw 
meat and blood. They are all afraid of the Cossacks." 

There is great enthusiasm wherever people are 
gathered together, and you know that all the talk is 
war — war only. It is difficult to get seated at a 
restaurant and make a meal, owing to the number of 
times national anthems are called for. Every minute 
or so an officer comes in, orders a bottle of wine, and 
then, taking glass in hand, stands up and says, "Gen- 
tlemen, our adored monarch!" or, "Gentlemen, our 
noble aUies. Vive la France!" Or, "Gentlemen, 
the English!" — "The Belgians!" and the orchestra 
goes through the national hymns while the toasts are 
drunk. 

One of the wounded who appeared at Moscow was 
Kuzma Krutchkof, the first to receive the ribbon of 
the Order of St. George for bravery. He gave a fine 
account of himself. He is a handsome young man, 
dark, slender, with a clever look on his sunburnt face. 

"It was like this," he said. "On the 30th of July, 
at ten o'clock in the morning, we set out from the town 
of Calvary to Alexandrovo. There were four of us — I 



IN MOSCOW 29 

and my friends Ivan Schtegolkof, Vassily Astakhof, 
and Michael Ivanof . As we were climbing a little hill 
we came up against a detachment of German soldiers 
from the 9th Lancers, twenty-seven men with two 
officers. At first the Germans were afraid, but after- 
wards they made a dash at us. They had the advan- 
tage of position, because they were on the hill and we 
below them. However, we stood to them steadily and 
killed a few of them as they came. In evading their 
attack we got separated from one another — Schte- 
golkof fought on my left ; on my right, near a bit of 
marsh, fought Astakhof and Ivanof. There were 
eleven Germans fighting me. I did not expect to re- 
main ahve, but I resolved to sell my life dearly. My 
horse was agile and obedient. I wanted to use my rifle, 
but in my haste the cartridge sHpped out. A German 
slashed at my fingers, so I threw the rifle down, seized 
my sword and set to work. I got several shght wounds, 
and I felt the blood flowing from them, but I knew 
they were not serious. For every wound I got I gave 
back a deadly blow which quieted a German for ever. 
An officer sprang at me, but I repulsed his attack and 
made him run and then chased him. When I caught 
him up, I waved my sword and hacked at his head, but 
only dented his helmet. I struck out again, but the 
officer jerked his head aside as he dashed along, and my 
sword caught him on the neck and almost completely 
cut his head off. I killed a few more men, but I began 



30 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

to feel that my sword was difficult to wield, so I caught 
hold of one of the German lances and killed all the 
others in turn with it. 

"Meanwhile my friends had managed the rest of 
them very cleverly. Twenty-four corpses lay on the 
ground, some being dragged about in terror by the 
horses. My friends were a little hurt and I had six- 
teen wounds, but they were all ^nothing,' just cuts on 
the back, on my neck, and on my hands. My horse 
was hurt in eleven places, too, but he carried me 
back for six versts without being attended to. Then 
he got weaker, and a peasant carried us the other four 
versts in his cart. After our wounds had been bound 
up, they sent the four of us to the hospital, and after- 
wards here to Moscow, though I asked to stay in 
Vitevsk, because there was no need for me to go to 
Moscow — it only meant troubling the authorities, 
and we were quite well. On the 14th of August, 
General Rennenkampf came to me, and, taking off his 
Order of St. George, pinned it on my breast, and con- 
gratulated me on receiving it. 

"My horse is alive and well. To-morrow I am off 
again to the war — it is dull for a healthy fellow to be 
here doing nothing. After our fight with the Germans, 
only our boots and caps were whole. All the rest of 
our clothes were cut and torn to bits. However, the 
fight was not much — the Germans cannot use their 
lances well ; they hold them stupidly under their arms, 



IN MOSCOW 31 

and cannot wield them about; you can easily beat 
them off and hurt them, especially on our good horses. 
I am married — yes ; all of us are married. I have 
two young sons, healthy Kttle fellows. I'll see them 
again some day, if God wills. But our Cossack women 
and children must get used to accidents.'' 

Kuzma has his picture in all the newspapers, but he 
has now returned to the war. 

Moscow is full of stories, for the convalescent are 
up and about, and three times, seven times, kiU the 
slain. At the bath-houses of the city, it is amusing to 
see naked soldiers exhibiting their wounds and telHng 
the stories of their battles to an admiring throng of 
civilians, amusing to see the siege of garrulous soldiers 
in the streets, in the taverns (where only tea is sold), 
and in the tramcars. Moscow is very near to 
the war. 

I met, at the house of Vassily Vassilitch, a young 
officer just returned from the front with dispatches, and 
he gave a very interesting account of the state of the con- 
quered territory in Eastern Prussia. He is a cousin of 
one of my Moscow friends, a tall, energetic young man 
with sunburnt face, eyes wide-opened, as in astonish- 
ment, eyes that you feel have seen things ^ lips parted as 
if startled, voice still hoarse from shouting commands 
upon the battlefield. 

"Well, what is it all like out there?" 

He takes a chair, puts it back facing you, and sits 



32 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

astride of it, and begins to talk as if bursting with the 
need to tell his story. 

"How do we fight? Oh, splendid! The forward 
movement is accomplished singing. The Germans 
seem distressed by the songs of the Russians as they 
fight. Yes, the Germans are just as brave as we are. 
They stick to it to the last point. When captured, 
they behave very correctly, and to all questions answer, 
*I have no information to give.' They will ansv/er no 
questions whatever." 

"How do the German population behave?" 
^^Nevazhno; not very well. They shoot at us. 
They spy a great deal, and have been able to give 
much information by means of the subterranean 
telephone. We could not understand how it was the 
German artillery fire was so skilfully directed, till we 
discovered the underground telephone. In a base- 
ment cellar one day we actually found an eighty-five- 
year-old crone telephoning to the enemy. During our 
questioning she had a fit and died of fright." 

" What are the towns like — Insterburg, for instance ? " 
"Insterburg is a fine town, about the size of Nizhni- 
Novgorod. Life isn't much upset. Business goes on. 
The value of a rouble has been fixed at three marks, 
and everything is cheap. We sometimes fear poison, 
and there have been some cases of poisoning, but the 
inhabitants are afraid of punishment. As for shooting 
from windows, we have fixed a tariff — first shot from 



IN MOSCOW 33 

a house, we blow up the house ; second shot from the 
same street we blow up the street. That is grim 
earnest on our part. Gumbinen is a smaller town, 
and is in rather a bad state. Eydkunen is a terrible 
sight, has no semblance of a town. When I came 
through with my regiment, the only thing we found 
was beer; the cellars were full of it. Our men, who 
had not had beer or vodka for a month, went mad 
over it. There was a stream of beer down the main 
street. You must understand there was not a soul 
there but ourselves, not a house that was not blackened 
by fire, not a window that was not broken, not a room 
that had not been ransacked. Precious things of all 
kinds lay in the streets, ruined and soaked by rain. 

"As for the villages, they have mostly been looted 
or burned. The Germans fire them as they retire. 
Often at night we have been glad of the light of the 
burning farms and villages, helping to find our wounded 
on the battlefield. The conflagrations made night like 
day. 

" Yes ; it makes a melancholy impression to go through 
village after village, blackened, deserted, looted. Once 
I noticed a ripe apple on a tree in one of the looted 
villages; it caused me some surprise. It was some- 
thing that had escaped the plunderer. 

"It is dangerous travelling alone or in twos. Even 
this conquered country is full of ambushes. The 
people are extremely hostile. There are robber bands, 



34 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

detachments of German cavalry as yet uncaptured, 
armed bicyclists. Many soldiers skulk in the woods. 
It is good for us that the German roads are so firm, and 
we can make journeys much more quickly than in the 
sand or mud of Russian Poland.'' 

"What is going to happen next up there?'' 
"Oh, a big battle, most likely. The Germans are 
straining every nerve to arrange a big defeat for us. 
Every one who can hold a gun is being pressed into 
service against us. We know that by the dead they 
leave in the field ; men without uniforms and in their 
usual civilian attire, many sailors from their warships, 
children of fifteen and sixteen, old men past the age of 
fighting. Progress is very difficult, but the news of the 
success in Austria inspires us, as no doubt it dispirits 
the enemy. And, as every one knows, we have an 
enormous number of men in the background — fresh, 
eager. I go back, myself, with reinforcements." 
"How did you feel under fire?" 
" It was unpleasant at first, but after a while it became 
even pleasant, exhilarating. One feels an extraordinary 
freedom in the midst of death, with bullets whistling 
round. The same with all the soldiers : the wounded 
all want to get well and return to the fight. They 
fight with tears of joy in their eyes." 

"They feel active hate towards the Germans?" 
"No; I wouldn't say that. They regard them 
merely as the enemy — the old enemy." 



IN MOSCOW 35 

"There is a certain beauty, in a way, in going to 
death with songs," said I. 

"I would even say there is no greater beauty," says 
the young officer. 

So war comes into its own in the popular imagina- 
tion. Despite the praise of peace and the comfort of 
peace, and even the fact that we are fighting to obtain 
peace, war seems to be a thing that must eternally 
recur — one of the human liturgies of beauty. 



Why Russia is Fighting 

Britain is fighting for disarmament and universal 
peace. France is fighting to save herself from the 
monster who has already devoured a portion of her side, 
Alsace and Lorraine. Germany is fighting to impose 
her order on the rest of the world, to make us all, as it 
were, wear German uniforms. Germany has had great 
dreams; one of them was of a German and Austrian 
belt from Heligoland to Constantinople ; another was of 
a finally subjugated France and possibly of a Belgium 
absorbed into the German Empire. Germany, taking 
herseK seriously as the standard-bearer of Western 
civilisation, considers that she has carried order, clean- 
liness, education and national efficiency to a point of 
perfection unattainable by the people of other coun- 
tries. Russia is fighting to preserve her national life 
and religion. 

Of all nations the most abhorrent to the Germans 
must be the Russians. The Russian character tem- 
perament and mind are all opposed to the German soul. 
The Russian subtlety and contradictoriness, the Rus- 
sian mysticism and unpracticality, above all things, 

36 



WHY RUSSIA IS FIGHTING 37 

Russian national untidiness, are intolerable to the 
German. The German is filled with loathing directly 
he passes the Russian frontier ; the difference between 
the well built towns, storehouses, and firm highways of 
Eastern Prussia and the wildernesses of Russian Poland 
is almost incredible. To enter Russia is to step down 
into an inferior world, a world that needs setting right. 

"Russia offers wonderful material for the making of 
history,'' said Bismarck ; "let but its feminine type of 
population be interbred with our strong, masculine 
Germans.'' "The Slavonic peoples are not a nation," 
wrote the Emperor William, "but rather soil on which 
a nation with a historic mission might be grown." 

In this it is impossible not to see a considerable 
amount of German stupidity. The Germans are going 
to suffer terribly through their ignorance of the strength 
of Russia, through their inability to realise to what an 
extent the Russians are national. It is because of 
their national individuality and of their vast popula- 
tion of like faith, like tongue, and like point of view 
that the Russians go to the front in confidence. When 
the Germans attack the Russians they are attacking a 
nation that has a background of 8,000 miles. 

The war has come as a relief to Russia, uniting all 
parties under one idea. For a long while Russia has 
been subjected to a strong German influence. Ger- 
many has long felt that "something might be done" 
with Russia, and it has done all it could to give a 



38 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Germanising tint to Russian government. It is not 
without significance, that story in Dostoieffsky's 
"Adult/' of the German who shot himself through 
vexation at the idea that Russia might come to nothing. 
The brutality with which the Russian revolutionary- 
movement was put down was not only approved by 
the Germans, but received a considerable amount of 
inspiration from them. 

Prince Trubetskoy in a recent article is even ready 
to say that there lies a German hidden under many 
Russian breasts. If that is so, it may account for many 
a brutal act and much of the feeling of oppression in 
Russia. When war was declared Russia suddenly grew 
lighter, as if an evil spirit had jumped off her back. 
German subjects were put under arrest and sent to 
remote places. German shops were closed. German 
goods tabooed; Berlinskaya Street became London- 
skaya, Petersburg became Petrograd, Schlusselburg 
became Oreshof, Kronstadt something else; in many 
schools the German language was given up and English 
taken instead ; the Hotel Vienna three doors from me 
became the Hotel of Holy Victory. But not only that. 
A little German devil of harshness and iron-heeledness 
jumped out and disappeared, and the Grand Duke 
Commander-in-Chief proclaimed reconcihation to the 
Poles, and every one became kinder to one another. 
People in Russia are naturally kind ; they have become 
even gentler since the war began. 



WHY RUSSIA IS FIGHTING 39 

"The German title Graf is related to the Russian 
verb grabit, to grab, to steal/' says Rozanof, of the 
Novoe Vremya. "The Germans have always been a 
predatory race as far as the Slavs are concerned. They 
are the very opposite of the Russians. In the whole 
of Russian literature there is not one page in which 
mockery is made of poverty, of suffering, of a girl who 
has been betrayed, or of a child that is illegitimate. 
Russian Hterature is one long hymn to the injured and 
insulted." * 

The whole of Russian popular feeling is of tender- 
ness rather than rapacity, and though, of course, there 
lurks in the Russian soul not only the brutal German 
but the more brutal Tartar, yet it is love to one another, 
fellow-sympathy in suffering, and gentle sociability that 
keep the great nation together. It is these that unite 
them round the sacred ark of the race. The Germans, 
sneering at the weak and at the victims of their lust for 
power, with their brutal materiaHsm and their cruelty, 
represent that which is most foreign to the Russian 
heart, and consequently that which is most abhorred by 
all the people. 

One of the commonest headings in Russian papers 
is "Holy War." A war, if it is going to have any 
success in Russia, must be a holy war. The Crimean 
War was a holy war to protect the Russian pilgrims 
from the persecutions of the Turks. The Japanese 

*V. v. Rozanof, "The Russian Idea." 



40 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

War never succeeded in getting thought holy — that 
was why it failed so disastrously. This war is holy to 
every one, and its motto is — getting rid of the German 
spirit in life, getting rid of the sheer materialistic point 
of view, getting rid of brutality and the lack of under- 
standing of others. The great spiritual power of the 
war has worked miracles in the social life of the people. 

How seriously the war is taken. "What do you 
make of the war?" I asked a well-known Russian the 
other day. 

"It is the Last Judgment," said he. "Every one 
has been handed in his account. Now weVe got to get 
square with Destiny. We must realise all our resources 
of will, and faith, and health, and put them in front of 
our national life to save it. It reminds me of the crisis 
in the drama of ^Peer Gynt. ' You remember when 
the button moulder came and said to Peer that his day 
was done, and that he must be put into the melting-pot 
and recast as someone else. Peer searched in his his- 
tory and in his life to get something that could redeem 
him. Only in the peasant girl Solveig did he find refuge 
from the moulder. So with Russia — to her also the 
button moulder has come and offered to melt her up 
with a strong alloy of Germany into something new. 
She must go to her peasants if she wishes to remain 
herself. In the hour of distress it is our peasants who 
will save us." 

Russia, above all things, is fighting that she may go 



WHY RUSSIA IS FIGHTING 41 

on being herseK. Everyone who loves Russia believes 
in her personal destiny. She is the youngest of the 
nations ; she has a great life before her. 

We fight, and the year grows colder and more bitter. 
The yellow leaves are falling day by day, and winter 
is at hand. Commissaries are in Moscow buying 
heavy overcoats for the Army for winter, and we 
know that the war becomes heavier, gloomier. Yet 
now and again we spare a glance beyond winter and 
ask, what will it be like when the foe is beaten? 

Will not Russia emerge greater than before — the 
true mother of the Slav races? Will not the Eastern 
Church remain imshaken, surer of itseh, with aU its 
heritage of early Christian tradition and present-day 
spiritual strength? 



VI 

Is It a Last War? 

All the same, I do not believe in this war as a last 
war, or in this war as "a war of things," war of ammu- 
nition, rifles, and clothes, rather than of men and ideals 
and emotions, a war that is only a matter of mathe- 
matics or addition and subtraction. 

I have just read in Russian translation an article 
by H. G. Wells on this war as a war of things, a war of 
equipment and machines. ^^ Things also make war," 
says the Russian translation. And the editor of the 
Russian paper insists on the lessons of that remarkable 
Western book "A World Set Free" and on the power 
of material things to put the world right. I think it is 
a pity that the author of "A World Set Free " insists 
on the power of material things. We British, alas, are 
only too ready to think that it is things that count. It 
gives rest to our souls to f^ the responsibility upon 
something solid and material and accepted. Hence 
our passion for things. Acts of Parliament, book regula- 
tions, equipments, conventions. 

What we really need is a younger generation that has 
faith in England's destiny, we need a nation physically 
fit, we need knowledge and training so that we do not 

42 



IS IT A LAST WAR? 43 

in future wait until the time of war to learn what are, 
for instance, the possibilities of the use of submarines, 
and of floating miaes. We need braias used for the 
nation's sake. And last of all, as Mr. Wells says, "we 
do, of course, need manufacture. '^ 

As a matter of fact we have got manufacture, we 
don't need to ask for it. "I can't get out of the habit 
of thinking in dozens of gross," said a London manufac- 
turer to me the other day. 

We go on manufacturing like the quern at the bottom 
of the sea. There was once a wonderful quern which 
came into the possession of a stupid man, and he said 
to it "Grind me herrings and soup, and grind them 
quickly and well." Unfortunately, he did not know 
how to stop the machine, and it is grinding out herrings 
and soup to this day. Hence the Atlantic Ocean. 

The German schoolmaster is our foe more than 
the German manufacturer. The longer time German 
children stay at school, and the bigger sacrifice of time 
given to military training tell tremendously in this 
national struggle. As William Watson writes in one 
of his poems : 

" It's ignorance, ignorance, ignorance 
Will pull Old England down." 

Yes, ignorance, lack of national faith, lack of good 
bodies. Only England will not be pulled down; we 
do not intend to let her. 



44 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

It has been averred that Russia was prepared for 
war, having the things ready. But that is to make a 
great mistake. The Russians are winning their battles 
because of their reKgious faith, their physical strength, 
and their sobriety. Not because of their things, their 
equipment. It is the Russians' bare breasts in the 
mouth of the cannon, their songs against the roar of 
artillery. They are inferior in guns, inferior in 
aircraft, inferior in the quahty of their boots. They 
have frozen and starved as no Germans could 
freeze or starve. And they have won. The panoply 
of Goliath is very suggestive. It wins battles for the 
Philistines. But let us not insist on it ; it is the other 
side of the question that we as a nation are most ready 
to forget. 

I read constantly in the Russian papers our English 
and French opinions that this war is a last war, a war 
for disarmament and universal peace, a final effort to 
crush '^barbarism." The socialists are to depose the 
Kaiser. The working men of England are to enter 
into alliance with the working men of foreign countries 
to avert war in the future. The working men in Russia 
and the Hberal bourgeoisie are greatly edified by this. 
They find in it another instance of the greatness of 
England. England, as ever, leads the other nations, 
and shows them the ideal. She moves step by step 
towards the millennium. 

But despite the pleasing sentiment, is it not probable 



IS IT A LAST WAR? 45 

that as a result of the war mihtarism will increase 
throughout the whole world ? We shall probably beat 
Germany, but we shall probably arrange with her a 
generous peace — not a humiliating peace. Russia will 
remain a great military nation the foundation of whose 
aristocracy is mihtary rank, and not, as with us in Eng- 
land, civil title. Mighty Japan will remain. Italy, 
who wantonly acquired Tripoli, will remain. England, 
with her dreadnoughts and with perhaps the Navy 
taken from the Germans and possibly with some system 
of conscription, will remain. And war has become 
more interesting. 

There is one nation that sincerely wishes peace, and 
that is America. It is fortunate for America that her 
people speak EngHsh and seem to be English by race. 
We British give them a sentimental protection, and also, 
as it happens, an accidental protection. If Germany 
won, America would be in danger. As it is, the extreme 
wealth of the American people sheds a baleful Hght on 
her destiny. As war goes on, with its tremendous ex- 
pense, America gains financial preponderance day by 
day. She will be in a position to hold Europe in 
bondage when the war is over. She seems destined to 
attract to herself more and more European hate. 

The world in which the armies move up and down 
and against one another, in which there have been in 
the past cultures greater than our own, where, since 
everlasting, wise men have risen and spoken, poets sung, 



46 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

priests anointed to sacrifice — is the hurly-burly, which 
remains ever the same. It is a mystery play planned by 
the gods, and we aU know our parts involuntarily. But 
it is not a play in five acts, it goes on for ever. It does 
not give an intellectual satisfaction, but a sensuous 
pleasure. The whispering of the nations together, the 
conspiracy, the march of men, the clash of arms, the 
flow of blood, the dance of death — it blends in idea 
and streams up to heaven in the great symphony. 



VII 

Autumn Leaves 

When I went to see Vassily Vassilitch one day he 
said to me, "Have you heard the earth crying?" 

"What do you mean?'' I asked. 

"Why," said he, "IVe heard her crying. As I lay 
in the grass with my ear to the ground I heard her. 
Like this oo-niy oo-m, oo-m. It was the time the soldiers 
were being mobilised and women were sobbing in every 
cottage and at every turning of the road, so it may only 
have been that I heard. But it seemed to me the earth 
herself was crying, so gently, so sadly, that my own 
heart ached." 

I understood what he meant. One night in Septem- 
ber, when I saw the first big, moist, yellow leaves come 
down on the wind, a thought whispered itself to my 
heart — the soldiers are dying. As I lay abed, long 
after midnight, and Hstened to the moaning wind I 
thought what many will think this autumn — the 
leaves are falling, falling — and away, far away on 
the battlefield, the soldiers are dying, dying. Listen 
to the wind in the trees, and you hear the great storm 
wind of Odin roaring through the Life-tree Yggdrasil, 

47 



48 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

You hear the rush of the valkyries, the Choosers of the 
slain. 

All the way from Moscow to the seat of war the 
forests are yellow and red, and the glades and meadows 
are strewn with dead leaves. Only on the fringe of the 
Baltic is it green as in England at this time of the year. 
But even on the Baltic shore the symbol is showing. 
Such a violent gale is raging that leaves and stems are 
broken off before their time, and the feet tread gently 
on a moving carpet of wrenched leaves. 

In Moscow on the boulevards hundreds of Kttle 
children with spades and pails make sand castles and 
fortifications and play at war whilst the leaves dance 
round them in circles and spirals. At Libau on the 
seashore the leaves race past mingled in clouds of 
bHnding sand, whilst beside them, and, as it were, 
attacking them, the great black turbulent sea turns 
over white in a dozen lines of foaming waves and 
thundering rollers. The white steeds of the sea rush 
up and spend themselves and die as if they also were in 
the great war. 

Good, however, to be nearer the war, to be, as it 
were, on the way to the war, and going with the soldiers. 
When the war broke out there was a strange strain on 
the mind. The feeling in London and Paris, in Eng- 
land and France, was no doubt sharper, more terrible ; 
but even far away in the depths of Russia, where there 
was little news and where the fighting seemed remotest 



AUTUMN LEAVES 49 

of all, there was a strain. We were tired out at the 
end of the day even though we had been doing nothing. 
Questions for which there were no answers incessantly 
dinned at the brain — 

"What does it mean?" "What will be the end of 
it ? " "Is England safe ? '' All night long objurgatory 
thrills passed through the body as if one were a sort of 
psychic seismometer. Moscow nights were nights of 
bad dreams wherein one suddenly became awake and 
exclaimed under the breath such things as, "This 
brings an era to a close. '^ "When this is over we may 
as well start again numbering from the year One." 

It was a great relief when I felt free to leave Moscow 
and could set out for the front. It was as if the mind 
were a bird tired with vain flight over boundless seas, 
and the bird had seen an island whereon to come to rest. 

I arrived at Libau at eight o'clock. All was dark. 
There was not a street lamp. The gas was turned low 
in the railway station and the blinds were drawn. The 
blinds were drawn in every house, and only by chinks 
of light could you tell that the city was not abandoned. 
As I sat in a cab going to a hotel a tramcar came slowly 
past with dim lights showing many people. Even the 
lights of the car had been shrouded in Httle -curtains. 
There were no people on the pavements and only my 
cab in the street. We crossed a bridge and saw the 
masts and black funnels of many ships — but never a 
light among them. The lamp was not lit on the light- 



so RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

house. The pier was black. The cinema theatre was 
closed and empty. 

I went into the hotel, once the Petersburg, now the 
Petrograd Hotel, and obtained a room. The Swiss 
spoke to me in German, the attendant showing me my 
room spoke German, the waiter addressed me in Ger- 
man. It seemed to me they might as well have left 
the name standing as Petersburg. 

The population of all the district along the Baltic 
shore takes its stand rather as German than as Russian. 
Riga, Windau, Mittau, Libau, and many other towns 
are more German than Russian. The High Street, the 
glavnaya ulitsa as it is in Russian, is in these towns the 
Grosse Strasse. The tramcar stops at the Halt Platz. 
The newspapers sold are all zeitungs and tagehlatts. The 
children talk German in the streets, the Jews talk Ger- 
man in the markets. Even Russian officers and Sisters 
of Mercy are heard talking German together. It is, 
therefore, rather in vain that the Government, as I 
read to-day, is going to re-name aU the streets and 
suburbs and institutions by Russian names. Let what 
is German so remain ! 

A cautious population that of Libau! Four-fifths 
of the business people are German Jews, and they have 
considerable hope that they will not suffer too much if 
the Germans should come in. Nevertheless, they have 
sent their women and their valuables into the depths of 
the country. I am told that after the shelling of Libau, in 



AUTUMN LEAVES 51 

the first flush of the idea that the Germans were coming 
in, many tradesmen refused to speak or understand 
Russian. Whether these false citizens had some under- 
standing with the Germans seems to be a matter for 
investigation. 

Libau was never in flames. That was the first lie 
of the war. It was shelled and one shell fell on the 
sand, but all the others fell into the sea. No one was 
hurt, no damage done. The German fleet has not 
reappeared. 

The city is under martial law ; no lights are allowed 
at night, all visitors to the town have to show their 
passports at once, sentries march up and down the 
seashore, there is a military patrol of the streets. It 
is generally felt that if it is Germany's intention to 
wage at any time an active and not merely a passive war 
with Russia, this territory, so German in its sympathies, 
is most liable to invasion. It can be invaded either by 
land or by sea. In any case, until the German fleet is 
destroyed or greatly weakened the Baltic ports will fear 
attack. 

That is why I came up to Libau. I should not be 
surprised at any moment to hear the sound of guns. 
Every day there are crowds of people on the sands 
staring out to sea, as if they were likely to see ships of 
war. But necessarily I shall not wait. I go on south- 
ward along the line of the struggle — as near as the 
authorities will let me go. 



52 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

A strange impression of Libau I take away with me 
— the empty and far-raging sea outside the town, and 
the quiet harbour inside it. The harbour is a strange 
sight with all the ships standing motionless and empty, 
the big black and red British ship, Bannockhurn; the 
bulky Baltica, of the Baltic Lloyd Company; a ship 
for some reason or trick painted with a huge red cross ; 
the Vorms, the Folsjo, the Commerce, the Air a, the 
Kazan; passenger ships plying to London, others to 
New York. This Libau is the chief port from which 
sail ordinarily the emigrants, the 300,000 Jews, Rus- 
sians, Poles, and Lithuanians who leave Russia annu- 
ally for America, but who are now closed in their 
Motherland against their custom. The warehouses 
are all padlocked, the quays are bare and empty, no 
dockers, no watchmen. Not a man on all these vessels, 
not a puff of steam from a funnel or a pipe in them. 
All is quiet and empty. 



VIII 

The Economic Isolation of Russia 

Russia at the beginning of the war expected to be 
shut within herself and cut off from the rest of Europe, 
it seems. Libau and Riga and the rest of the Baltic 
ports were dead, so far as shipping is concerned. The 
Black Sea was stoppered at the Bosphorus, and the 
ports of Odessa, Sebastopol, Novorossisk, and Batum 
were consequently rendered idle. The Arctic Ocean 
was considerably enHvened as a result of the war; 
Archangel has become a great port, receiving American 
liners, passenger steamers from England, and cargo 
boats in great numbers. English steamers have sailed 
down the River Ob as far as Tomsk — but the Arctic 
closes early. Towards the end of October the port 
of Archangel freezes and cannot be kept open later than 
Christmas even with the help of ice-breakers. European 
traffic with Russia ceases except by the laborious route 
of the gulf of Bothnia and Sweden. But mines have 
been laid along the Finnish coast of the Gulf of Bothnia 
and Russian trade seems likely to flow through Vladi- 
vostok alone for a while. 

The results of the blockade are noticeable in Russia, 

S3 



54 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Ordinarily Russia exports an enormous quantity of 
foodstuffs — grain, butter, sugar, eggs, meat, and- so 
on — and as a consequence of her inability to discharge 
these products she has an immense superabundance of 
them on her hands. Directly the war began it was 
possible to note in Siberia what may be called "the 
returning tide of butter " ; butter had no exit and would 
not keep, and therefore had to be sold to people at home 
at any price — the peasant women in Siberia began to 
use butter for themselves since it was so cheap. There 
has been a general cheapening of food, and not only has 
the cost of living not increased as a result of the war, 
but it has decreased. But the value of the Russian 
rouble has gone down twenty per cent, owing to Russia's 
inability to export her products. 

But though food has remained cheap other things 
have become dear. The import of manufactured goods 
into Russia has almost ceased, and the stock in many 
shops gets less and less and is marked dearer and 
dearer. Germany used to export to Russia immense 
quantities of utensils and chemically prepared mate- 
rials. Nearly all the medicines came from Germany, 
and there is now a great famine in drugs. Even for 
the wounded and the sick there is a scarcity of medicine, 
and it costs a great deal more than it should do to cure 
the poor soldier. Ink costs more than it did, photo- 
graphic materials, clothes, Vienna boots cost fifty per 
cent more ; Paris hats and costumes are disappearing. 



THE ECONOMIC ISOLATION OF RUSSIA 55 

Russian women are going to be without fashions for a 
long time to come. 

So the middle and upper classes will feel the pinch 
of the war ; but the poor, who do not ask for anything 
more than food, will be better off, especially as they 
are saved the great former waste of money on vodka 
and beer. There are no unemployed, the beggars have 
almost all disappeared. Women and children are work- 
ing in the factories on day and night shifts. Money is 
flowing like water, and, for all manner of reasons, life 
is brisk. War is a great spending of savings. The 
great rush of military expense has floated many a 
poverty-stricken family and given it money and inter- 
est and Hfe. 

The vigour of the Russian Government at once 
became evident and was well exemplified by the action 
as regards vodka and beer. In no other country in the 
world could drinking be stopped, as it were, by a stroke 
of the Monarch's pen. It has always been said that 
vodka afforded so much revenue that the Tsar would 
never take really active steps to suppress it. But, 
here, in the midst of the greatest financial need, he 
sacrificed an enormous revenue in order to save and 
strengthen his people in the time of danger. To-day 
the shutters are up in every Government monopoly 
shop of the vast Russian Empire. It is a stupendous 
fact. 

It is sad to see so many wounded soldiers who have 



56 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

lost two or three fingers. It seems trifling compared 
with body wounds, but in reahty the loss of fingers is 
more pitiful. It means an end to useful toil, an end 
also to shouldering the rifle for the Motherland. That 
is what war means economically ; the loss of labouring 
hands in the building of the State. Russia was taken 
in the midst of things by this war. How many railways 
she was constructing, how many towns she was build- 
ing! 

All lies idle now as I write, and the autumn rains 
drench down on thousands of scaffoldings and melan- 
choly heaps of bricks and mortar, left as they were on 
the day of mobilisation. It is interesting to speculate 
how the contracts are being fulfilled on the Central 
Asian Railway, and on the Altai Railway. The Aus- 
trian and German prisoners of war are being drafted 
on to the work, according to the Russian papers. A 
number of these unfortunate Teutons will taste the 
sorrows of a Siberian winter.* They must take the 
place of those who are fighting. 

*By February 1915 there were over 200,000 Austrian and German 
prisoners in Siberia. Even far-away Yakutsk, with a winter where 60" of 
frost is nothing unusual, has its hundred or so. There are several thousand 
at Irkutsk, at Barnaul, at Krasnoyarsk, at Tashkent. They have the 
hardest time of all prisoners since the Russian standard of living is so low 
and the rigour of the climate so unexampled. It is reported that many 
Germans have expressed their gladness to be captured and so out of the 
struggle. But if so they did not know what was in store for them — the 
task of replacing industrially those who have been taken from Siberia to 
fight. 



THE ECONOMIC ISOLATION OF RUSSIA 57 

It is astonishing to think of it. Practically all the 
able-bodied men of the immense tract of Russia and 
Siberia are now on the German and Austrian frontier. 
Their customary work all remains behind ! They have 
not a thought for it. Their eyes look ever forward to 
Berlin and Vienna. Here at Koshedari, where I write, 
thirty miles from the Nieman, I watch the fresh troops 
still coming in every day from Russia. The trains do 
not suffice to take them, they go forward on foot, on 
horseback, in wagons and carts, with food supplies, 
with saddles, with fodder, with officers, baggage and 
equipments. They are all in clean and unf rayed uni- 
forms, the faces are fresh and simple; a contrast to 
those who return from the front, all dust and mud, 
their faces set, their eyes glaring. What confidence 
there is among the soldiers! Youngsters with faint 
down on their lips and cheeks come prancing past on 
their horses, holding their black Cossack lances with 
the assurance of men who have spent all their hves 
fighting. Their officers look much more resourceful 
and able than ever they did in peace. The war has 
made them. 

They all go forward to death or victory. The river 
of Time has reached the rapids, and the smooth current 
of existence has reached Niagara. Boys have become 
men ; young men middle-aged men ; middle-aged men 
old men. They all fly to destiny. 



rx 

On the River Niemen 

Grodno, on the River Niemen, is one of those 
miserable towns of the Jewish Pale, crowded with 
a poverty-stricken and slatternly humanity. Panic 
has ranged there ever since the German invasion. 
First it was crowded with penniless refugees from 
Suvalki and the country round about, and then, in 
its turn, its own people began to flee. Nearly all the 
women and children left the town. The streets are 
crowded with Russian soldiers, who outnumber the 
rest of the population by twenty to one. The shops 
are sold out of half their merchandise, for the soldiers 
buy up everything edible. One passenger train a day 
leaves for Vilna and one for Warsaw, and they are 
packed with refugees. Six or seven trains of soldiers 
leave every day to reinforce the troops at Lodz and 
Petrokof . Trains of wounded arrive ; horse and motor 
wagons of them arrive by the road. 

I saw many soldiers' funeral services held in the 
little wooden churches put up in the hospital yards. 
Here lay the dead warriors in their open coffins, with 
crowns on their heads, their faces hke marble. Scores 

58 



ON THE RWER NIEMEN 59 

of soldiers, chance passers by, held candles and stood 
round the dead ones and crossed themselves and kissed 
the marble faces a last good-bye. "How did this one 
die? How did this one die?'^ I heard in whispers. 
"Shrapnel, shrapnel' ' came the whispered answer. 
The coffins were lifted by the soldiers, a dozen for each 
coffin, and hoisted on the shoulders — the wood that 
held the dead lay against the cheeks of the living as 
the procession went out through the town, with stand- 
ards and standard-bearers, and priests in their vest- 
ments. Many of the soldiers taking part in the service 
were those who had not yet been under fire, but who 
were going forward that very night. The idea of how 
soon they might be white and dead, like those they 
carried, must have crossed their minds; but death 
calms a Russian, it does not unnerve him. The 
soldiers' faces were calm and steadfast. 

This was a Sunday afternoon ; all day, all evening, 
all night it rained. I spent many hours at the railway 
station watching the trains go off; watching German 
prisoners being brought in; talking to the wounded, 
and being myself cross-questioned by a poHce agent, 
who thought me a suspicious character. About ten 
o'clock I walked through the town to see what might 
be going on. There in the ghetto I saw a touching 
sight. A score of carts had come in from the country 
and the battlefield, not the ordinary carts with tilts, 
but those long, narrow contrivances on which the 



6o RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

peasant timber men brought from the forest to the 
sawTnill whole pme logs — twenty of these on loose and 
blundering wheels were clattering over the cobbles and 
bumps and holes of a poor street. In them lay wounded 
soldiers wrapped in brown blankets, just as they had 
been picked up from the field of victory. Every twenty 
paces the carts stopped in order that the wounded 
might rest from the terrible jolting, and then from out 
the poor houses in the vicinity the population darted 
and asked questions. 

There was a Httle crowd of ragged Jews round each 
cart, and the wounded sat up and talked, those who 
could sit up. The Jews brought white rolls, and laid 
them in the straw by the soldiers' sides, and they put 
cigarettes in the soldiers' mouths and lit them — many 
of the soldiers had no use of their arms. Poor wounded, 
their brown blankets were soaked through, their voices 
hoarse with cold, their faces pinched and bloodless — 
but they tried to chuckle and laugh and tell us how they 
had been beating the Germans ! And the crowd cried, 
one by one, "Have you heard of ours?" "Have you 
heard of ours?" For the Jews also have their kin in 
the battle. 

The Russians have driven the Germans back from 
all this country of the Nieman Valley. It was difficult 
fighting from Insterburg to the Nieman and back again, 
but retreating or advancing the Russians showed 
themselves superior to the Germans in courage and 



ON THE RIVER NIEMEN 6i 

verve and military resource. They had to fight against 
a better equipped army, an army a hundred times 
better educated, against better guns and better science, 
but won by virtue of the personal religion in the soldier, 
and the overwhelming moral justness of the cause. 
"Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just.'* 

The Russians got as far into East Prussia as Allen- 
stein at the beginning of the war. They won battles, 
they ravaged the country, they sent a rumour of terror 
before them to Berlin. But they walked into many 
traps, lost great numbers of men, and blazed away 
a great quantity of precious ammunition. Impetuous 
General Ranenkampf, whose brother is a German 
general on the other side, in fact Governor of Konigs- 
berg, is reported to have said : " Cut my right hand off 
if we are not in Berlin by Christmas." Berlin was a 
long way to go, especially for the brave but simple 
Russians. Many hard days and retreats and terrible 
sanguinary battles were in store, and Christmas in the 
trenches — in trenches mostly dug in Russian earth. 
An enormous number of Russian prisoners were taken 
at the battle of the Mazurian lakes near Oesterode. A 
man in Konigsberg watched the Russian prisoners 
march past for four hours and three quarters. Many 
officers were killed, several generals, and a multitude 
of common soldiers. The German General von Hin- 
denburg was greatly honoured, the Germans mightily 
elated. The Grand Duke Nicholas and his armies were 



62 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

chased out of Germany altogether, and the hot Ger- 
man pursuit did not cease till the Russians turned at 
bay fifty miles to the Russian side of the frontier. 

The Germans doubtless were much cheered by the 
Russian disappearance, and it was a great thing to be 
able to tell their public that not one of the enemy re- 
mained on German soil. But their victory was also a 
delusion. They in their turn underestimated the 
strength of the enemy, and dreamed perhaps of taking 
Vilna on the rush. 

Or perhaps they sought to divert Russian attention 
whilst they developed their forces for the attack of 
Warsaw and of the rehef of Pshemisl. In any case, 
their sharp defeat on the bank of the Niemen could 
hardly have entered into their plans. They pursued 
the Russians back to the Russian bases — keeping to 
the high road and to the railroad, and concentrating 
all their efforts to gain the other side of the Niemen, 
and so pierce the centre of the defence. But the Rus- 
sians turned and drove them back, at Simno and Sred- 
nild and Druskenniki and Sein, villages to the north 
of Grodo. One who watched the battle at Sredniki 
tells thus of the struggle : 

"It began to be said that the enemy were nearing 
us in immense strength, and that they would attack us 
at the fording of the river. At three in the afternoon 
the firing began, and in an hour fighting became general, 
all efforts of the Germans being concentrated on that 



ON THE RIVER NIEMEN 63 

point of the river where it is joined by the tributary, 
the Dubissa. On the steep cHff of the right bank 
moaned the Russian howitzers; down below on the 
sand of the river shore the field artillery was at work, 
and on the other side of the river, covered by the 
artillery fire, the Russian foot heroically repulsed the 
Germans, who for their part were making superhuman 
efforts to break through to the shore. The battle was 
fought all night — right till the dawn. The sounds 
of the quick-firing guns and of the cannon and the 
rifle shots mingled in one long, uninterrupted thunder 
roll the whole night long. But twice above the tumult 
was heard from afar the cheering of the Russian 
regiments charging the enemy and driving them back. 
The fires from burst shells lit up the field of battle, and 
from many little hills and clifis of the district it was 
possible to look down on the conflict, and see it as 
clearly as if it were being enacted on the palm of the 
hand. 

At the faint light of dawn the fighting became less 
vigorous and gradually died down, and there succeeded 
a strange silence, broken only by occasional rifle shots 
and far-away shouts. The air still throbbed and 
thrummed as with a metal voice, but the thunder of 
battle had ceased. The Germans fled with the night, 
leaving behind on the battlefield heaps of corpses, 
shells, broken wagons, automobiles, motor-bicycles. 
The sun came up brightly, and silvered with his beams 



64 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

the waters of the Niemen, the yellow-leaved drooping 
forests, the gentle hills, and the extraordinary battle- 
field. There, where dogs howled and innumerable 
ravens croaked and fluttered, lay thousands of dead, 
face downward, face uppermost, some as if they were 
sleeping, others as if searching to find something in 
the earth, in heaps, in the trenches, behind mounds, 
mixed up with guns and swords and helmets. So the 
sun saw what had happened between his going down 
and his rising again. 

The Tsar sets out for the front, and with the excite- 
ment of his possible advent at any point the efforts of 
generals and officers and men are doubled. So the 
Germans are driven back, once more the Russian 
troops cross the frontier. 

The Militia is called out to stand in guarded occupa- 
tion of the country whilst the eager troops go on. 

The refugees return; in many cases to ruined 
homes, burned farms, and sacked villages, but they do 
not weep over it. 'A month ago I was a rich man,' 
said a Pole to me. ^ I had a large pension establish- 
ment on the Nieman, and many people came to me for 
their summer holidays. Now I have nothing but what 
I stand in ; you see. Still, I'll build it again. If the war 
stops, I'll borrow money and build it again.' " 



X 

An Aeroplane Hunt m Warsaw 

The aeroplanes sail in and out of the light clouds, 
their stately progress like that of cranes passing over 
high mountains, and down below, on all the street 
corners of Warsaw, people stand and gaze at them all 
day long, pointing, gesticulating, looking through field- 
glasses. Suddenly, one of these human birds in the 
sky stops in its steady flight and staggers and falls, 
and a thousand people in the city below see it faUing. 

All at once there is a great rush and many cries — 
"This way is quicker, this way quicker," and every- 
body rushes in the straightest line possible for the 
point where it seemed the flying-machine had fallen. A 
moment before in the street, people were merely walk- 
ing past, or standing and staring; a moment later 
every one was running in one direction as if possessed. 

Out of the restaurants and the cafes dashed the 
officers having their dinner and with them their ladies, 
and jumped into waiting motor-cars and followed the 
crowd. Every cab was taken. People crowded on to 
every vehicle going in the right direction, and there 
were many droshkies having as many as a dozen or 

6s 



66 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

fifteen passengers standing on them. I was running 
with my knapsack on my back. Street after street 
we traversed, the further we went the denser the crowd. 
Out of the houses came women without their hats, and 
many children. PoHcemen left their posts, hawkers 
their stalls, barbers came out in their aprons, Jews ran 
in their square hats and black cloaks, students, school- 
boys, fifty thousand of them, increasing every moment. 
When we came to a cul-de-sac, some cHmbed the palings 
and ran across unoccupied building plots ; others went 
round and were in time to race the paling climbers at 
the other end. It was a regular steeplechase. 

Motors went coughing by, hooting with their syrens, 
tintinabulating, trumpeting. Horsemen pranced along- 
side. Only half the people knew what they were after. 
A panting, breathless student ran past me carrying a T- 
square in his hand, but having no hat on his head. He 
relapsed into a walk, and stopped to ask me what was 
the matter, he for his part had not the least notion 1 

After about two miles, we issued from the city and 
came on to the open plains of Poland, and there lay 
the Russian Army encamped outside the city. Here 
a Russian aeroplane was making a tremendous clatter 
just overhead, and the crowd below was running this 
way and that to avoid a possible bomb that might be 
thrown at them. They could not be sure that it was 
not a German aeroplane. 

Here we all turned up, on foot, in wagonettes, in 



AN AEROPLANE HUNT IN WARSAW 67 

motor-cars, on bicycles, girls, boys, men, and women — 
and came to a standstill. 

Where were the fallen aeroplane and the presumably 
dead Germans? Nobody knew. 

Some rushed this way, some that. Some said : "It's 
over there,'' some others, "it's over here." There was 
plenty of room, and we all swarmed over the plain as if 
we had come out for a picnic. The Cossacks from the 
encampment pranced about. The crowd did not feel 
very disappointed. Something was going on some- 
where. I jumped a trench full of wet mud and climbed 
on to the rampart opposite. It was crowded with 
people all the way along, all disputing the merits of 
the situation. One man held that a bomb had been 
thrown from a German aeroplane. Another held that 
there had been a duel in the air. A third, a Jew, main- 
tained that the Russians, not knowing their business 
properly, had shot down one of their own aircraft. 

The Russian officers looked with astonishment on 
the crowd that had come out and invaded their terri- 
tory. Suddenly an order was given to the Cossacks : 
"Chase all these people back again !" Whrr-pp ! Six 
Cossacks brought their horses round and started for- 
ward in a gallop together. 

The mob screamed and bolted. Never have I seen 
such a rush. They went like blown leaves. It was 
difficult, however, to get down quickly from the ram- 
part. A Polish girl near me tripped, and dived head 



6S RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

foremost into the mud in the trench and lay there 
a minute as in a comic picture. When she crawled 
up the bank the people stopped in their flight to laugh 
at her, for her face was covered with yellow mud and 
wet mud was dripping from her nose. 

But it was not a pogrom. The Cossacks were kind, 
and the crowd of skedaddling black figures laughed as 
well as screamed. Then more Cossacks came up and 
started driving us back in earnest. Those who had 
come in cabs jumped back and ordered the drivers to 
take them home again, and the motors swung round 
and bore their would-be sightseers away. Those on 
foot followed, the whole 50,000 of them and more, 
flocking, rushing, still asking questions — " What was 
it? Have the Germans come? Only an aeroplane? 
Whose? No, never?'' and so on. As we went back 
we met hundreds and thousands on their way to the 
fields. They also asked — " What is it ? Where is it ? " 
And we cried — "Back! back!" And some said — 
"The Cossacks are coming!" and others said — "The 
Germans! the Germans!" 

Still fatuous crowds gathered round, simple people 
who were asking one another what was the matter, and 
those on the outside pushed and punched and strained 
to see the corpses they thought were in the centre. 
Even the police were befooled into cutting their way 
through these onion-hke masses to see what was in the 
centre. But they were onion right through. 



AN AEROPLANE HUNT IN WARSAW 69 

I got back to the place I started from. But all the 
rest of the evening in Warsaw crowds kept forming 
round people supposed to be "in the know.'' And 
still you heard the question — "What was it happened 
this afternoon?'' 

The true answer was that a German aeroplane had 
been shot down by the Russians, and came to earth 
ten miles away. 

That evening all trains going south or west were 
cancelled. The Vienna station was shut up. The 
Governor issued a notice asking the people to remain 
calm, since the troops would defend Warsaw to the 
last drop of blood. The newspapers held that Warsaw 
was calm and confident. Next day, Sunday, the faint 
sounds of distant firing were heard. Crowds went out- 
side the city and heard the sounds more distinctly. 
They also saw the wounded being brought in. 

On Monday we listened to the desultory thunder of 
cannon. Going to the city to post my daily letters, I 
found every post-office was closed and was informed 
that the post had retired to Moscow. I went across 
the Vistula and out to the suburb of Praga. There 
was a post there, but everything had to be written in 
Russian and the Censor must initial it. Letters could 
be handed in at 11 p.m. I got nothing through. 

On Tuesday, the British, French, and Belgian Con- 
sulates closed their doors, the banks shut, scarcely any- 
one would give change for paper money. There was no 



70 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

bread in the bakers' shops, scarcely any milk to be ob- 
tained at the dairies — at the cafes only black coffee. 
The cannon sounded much louder. The papers held 
there was no cause for alarm. All the same, removing 
vans began to appear in the streets. Many shops 
remained padlocked all day ; other shops started sales. 

On Wednesday the fighting was more continuous and 
insistent. It lasted all night, and it was difficult to 
sleep for the sound of the cannon. The schools were 
dismissed. The Government theatres closed. The 
people left the city in great numbers and swarmed 
Hterally on to the roofs of trains going to Moscow and 
Vilna. The Governor issued a notice, posted on all the 
walls — *^ Anyone injuring the telephonic or telegraphic 
connections wiU be shot without trial. ^^ Enormous 
crowds waited at the Viensky Station and listened to 
the battle going on beyond the city. 

I went to a little Polish theatre and saw an amusing 
political comic opera, in which figured Wilhelm as Alex- 
ander of Macedon and two twin German generals, both 
as Napoleon ; the other characters were Miss Warsaw, 
Moses, a Jew, a French soldier, a Highlander in kilts, 
a Russian bogateer, and Austria, a scantily dressed 
woman, with brass cases over her breasts and a black 
eagle painted between ; on her head was a brass casque 
and she danced the tango with the Kaiser. One of 
the funniest things of the evening was a Pogrom Dance 
performed by the Kaiser. First a girl came in and 



AN AEROPLANE HUNT IN WARSAW 71 

danced a Polish dance. Then the Kaiser jumped up 
and roared, ^'Away with that; accept our German 
cuhure.'^ Then four marionette babies were fixed on 
the stage and the Kaiser did a War Dance round them, 
threatening with his sword and roaring. When it 
was all over the Allies marched past singing the Pohsh 
Marseillaise. The audience stood up and cheered and 
cheered again, calling back the dancers and actors to 
repeat the rarely sung anthem. As a background to 
the cheering and singing was the never-silent rumble 
of the cannon. 

All night and all next day the cannon sounded more 
and more threatening, and we began to ask ourselves 
when would shells begin to drop in the city. Our 
thoughts were turned in a different direction, however. 
On Thursday night an aeroplane sailed over the city 
and dropped a bomb which fell in Wolf-street, destroyed 
the top storey of a tobacconist's shop, and shattered 
sixty or seventy windows. On Friday morning crowds 
turned up here to look at the torn roof and ruined walls 
and windows. A policeman arrested me as a suspicious 
character, and I had to go to the police station and 
satisfy the preestaf. This was the third time. Ni- 
Ickevol 

In the afternoon, after dinner, I went into my hotel 
room and lay down and read the papers. Presently I 
began to consider the cannonade and ask myself the 
significance of the increasingly loud reports, when 



72 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

suddenly there was an overwhelming splashing explo- 
sion just by. I rushed out again. People were running 
hither and thither, and overhead was a German aero- 
plane. Soldiers fired volleys at it; the public, in 
fright, tried to avoid being directly under the machine. 
No one could say where the bomb had fallen. We 
watched the aeroplane fly away unhurt. I went at 
once to the Vienna station, and was within one hundred 
yards of it when another explosion occurred, and the 
crowd of sightseers came running towards me. This 
time four soldiers and four horses had been killed, 
just at the station. The mob was panic-stricken, 
howling and shrieking. As I stood by a telegraph 
pole, a girl in hysterics clutched my overcoat, and 
yelled. "There's not the slightest danger," said I. 
But as some hundreds of soldiers started firing into the 
air, she broke into sobs and threw her arms about. 

The aeroplane kept fairly low and went along Mar- 
shalkovsky, the Piccadilly of Warsaw, and as it went it 
seemed to drive all manner of traffic along with it. A 
general in a motor-car came up and shouted to the 
people, "Home! Home! Don't wait upon the order 
of your going ..." It was a mauvais quart d^heure 
for Marshalkovsky. But presently the aviators, after 
daringly returning and circling over the station, turned 
away westward and got back to the German camp. 
The crowds returned to their old standing places, and 
there began a murmur of conversation that filled whole 



AN AEROPLANE HUNT IN WARSAW 73 

streets. Warsaw is certainly a city that can be terror- 
ised. On the whole, there was more to fear from the 
running crowd than from the German ^^bombists.'' 
The roll of the cannon goes on. If the Germans came 
in there would be a bad state of affairs, but in order 
to come in they have to defeat an immense, brave 
Russian army. It is also a matter of the effectiveness 
of the big German guns. When the weather turns wet, 
it is difficult to get these guns along. If it remains dry 
and clear, as to-day, there is bound to be more trouble. 
As I revised these lines, there was quiet again. The 
Germans had been defeated. The bombs were their 
parting shots. 



XI 

The First Battle of Warsaw 

On the Sunday after the aeroplane hunt in Warsaw 
I saw the cHmax of the great battle that foiled the first 
German attempt on the city. 

The German force that ran the Russians back from 
East Prussia to the River Niemen, and which was in 
turn driven back by the Russians, had evidently not 
been a strong one, and its operation on Russian soil 
was only a diversion. Whilst Russian attention was 
fixed on North- West Poland a really important develop- 
ment was taking place in South- West Poland. Here 
the German and Austrian armies were accumulating 
and rolling out like a rising thunderstorm on the horizon 
of Warsaw. Of course, directly the Germans were 
driven back in the north one looked to the angle where 
lie Cracow and Breslau for the next big fight, but it 
only needed two days to show that the Germans and 
Austrians were coming forward from their own terri- 
tory with great celerity. 

The whole of South- West Poland had been overrun 
— Chenstoldiof , Petrokov, Radom, Ivangorod, and 
Lodz had all been taken. But for the fact that it is 

74 



THE FIRST BATTLE OF WARSAW 75 

necessary to keep this great nervous mixed population 
of Warsaw calm, considerable mention of these facts 
must have been made in dispatches. The German 
advance on Warsaw nullified for the time being the 
Russian successes on the road to Cracow. It caused 
a general retirement of the Russians in Austria. Even 
Lemberg was in danger for a while. A glance at the 
railway map will show how important is Warsaw, 
holding as it does aU the network of lines in its grasp. 
The successive attempts of the Germans to take it show 
how highly they would prize the capture. 

On the final Sunday of the first great battle I 
wandered outside Warsaw and came to a deserted hut, 
on the roof of which I sat till nightfall watching the 
fight. 

It is a duU Sunday and the battle thunder is incessant, 
like a sort of persistent resentment. Earth is smoking 
upward to a grey-red sky. The whole grey western 
sky has a dull red glow in it, and from the landscape 
•rise volumes of smoke and flames from burning farms, 
rise circles of white smoke from shells just burst. 
Autumn is yellow, there is much mud underfoot, the 
cabbage fields lie all trampled and stubbed, the grey 
wooden cottages of the Polish peasants are either de- 
serted or are taken up by soldiers for their night 
quarters. On my right is a trembling wood, on my 
left lies the grey high road marked out by telegraph 
poles. None of the public are allowed on it. But 



76 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

military motor-cars tear along it as if racing ; reinforce- 
ments of foot march along it to the positsi; lorries of 
wounded return slowly along it, going with their sore 
burdens to the bandaging point at the outer city gate. 
Anon, the road is empty and you look along the whole 
dreary stretch of it from the foreground, where Hes 
the way up to Warsaw, to the west, where it loses itseK 
in dust and vapour and smoke. 

From the north came clanging, metallic explosions, 
which sound as if the cannon thunder were resounding 
from many metal roofs. From the south come low, 
bello^ving detonations. From the centre come sharp, 
clouting reports that beat the air like doors banged and 
banged again — the machine-guns' chatter and rattle. 
The battle rages towards Warsaw from the north-west, 
the roar and murmur of battle growing and trembling 
and raging forward. It sounds every now and then as 
if some enormous machine on wheels were rolHng for- 
ward ponderously and irresistibly towards the city. 
Nearer and nearer come the bursting shells. It is 
fascinating beyond words to watch and Hsten. 

A sentry came up and questioned me, a pleasant, 
simple fellow, who was not afraid or absurdly suspicious. 
I showed him my papers, told him who I was, and 
offered him a cigarette — I keep a supply of cigarettes 
for stray soldiers — and he was quite cheerful and 
happy. 

^' Yours are fighting weU," said he, "the English. 



THE FIRST BATTLE OF WARSAW 77 

I heard how they have been chasing the Germans. 
Even if they do give us a hot time here they won't 
beat the Enghsh. They are a people, they are a great 
people." 

"The Russians are doing splendidly/' said I. "You 
are the only ones to have fought Germany in Germany, 
we others, poor Belgians, French, English, have been 
struggling all the time on our own territory.'' 

The sentry smiled. "I was at Soldau and Leiden- 
burg," said he. "After we got past Mlava we went 
on and on, and found nothing in our way. We had 
a hot time coming back though. Their artillery is so 
fine, and they have so many telephones. We could 
never rest with our battery. Wherever we took it 
they found the range and the mark at once." 

"What's going to happen now?" I asked. 

"Don't know. We've been fighting them ten days 
now, and we make no progress. They are very ob- 
stinate. What do they think they are going to do 
here? They can't take Warsaw." 

"Still you retire?" 

"In places. There are many spies." 

"How far away are the Germans now?" 

"There, in the centre, about six versts" — he pointed 
to the long grey spectral high road. "I was at the 
front yesterday — that is about two versts from here — 
and the Germans lie four versts farther." 

"And in the North?" I asked. 



78 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

"There I don't know. Nearer perhaps. There the 
Germans are advancing. Their left wing was beaten 
yesterday, but their right received reinforcements and 
advanced and took possession of an important ridge.'' 

The sentry went on, and I remained with my thoughts 
and the battle thunder all around. The sentry reported 
my presence, and in a while a cantankerous but smiling 
officer of police came and questioned me and warned 
me off. I walked with him a mile, however, and talked 
to him. He said the Russians were winning, and yet 
every now and then he stopped to listen to the rattle 
of the machine-guns. I could see him trembling. 

How strange ! The sound of battle drew me nearer 
and nearer, but he evidently would have given any- 
thing to be off duty and out of it all. Still, his orders 
were to calm everybody he met, and he assured me 
I should see thousands .of German prisoners on the 
morrow. 

And I wandered away from him back to the city. 
It was about five miles to the outer gate, Zastava, of 
Warsaw, and long before I reached it I sav/ the black 
masses of the curious and anxious crowd held back 
there by the mounted police. These were tremulous 
days for Warsaw. 

It was ^YQ^ miles more to the centre of the city and a 
restaurant. At last I reached the centre, and there, 
as ever at night time, all was gaiety and frivolity, the 
cafes full to the doorways, the cinema shows glaring 



THE FIRST BATTLE OF WARSAW ' 79 

as in Tottenham Court Road, the broad pavements 
crowded with Polish dandies, with elegantly dressed 
women and oghng girls, with gossiping Jewesses and 
black-cloaked Abrahams, with hundreds of newspaper 
hawkers selling, not only Polish sheets, but also The 
Times and Le Matin, There are not many English 
here, but the Poles read EngHsh gladly. 

I had my dinner and my coffee hstening to a selection 
of ragtimes. 



XII 

The Day of Victory 

A DAY of victory or an armistice. Rumour has it 
that the German left flank has found itself outnumbered 
at Ivangorod, and the right flank has had to retire. 
No cannon thunder in the night, none in the morning, 
but instead the brightest, warmest day of autumn, 
an unspent summer day found by the thrifty year and 
offered us in the gloom of Russian October. The sun 
shone brilliantly to-day, and from all the trees, and in 
the open spaces from nothing at all, hung long gossamer 
threads. All Warsaw was waving in gentle gossamer. 
Violence and war were far from Nature's thoughts. 

It is the Monday after my day out in the country 
listening to the great battle. I have been down to the 
Brest station, where the trains go out to Moscow. It 
is blocked up with fugitives and their hurriedly packed 
household effects. The more thunder of war and the 
more bombs thrown from the air, the more people 
resolve to flee. It is not, however, easy to flee; a 
special permit has to be obtained and then a ticket. 
You may wait all day and still fail to get a place on the 
train. The authorities close the booking office directly 
they have sold the places on the two outgoing trains. 

80 



THE DAY OF VICTORY 8i 

On my way back I had a passage of words with a 
poHceman in black and red and his officer in buff. 
They wanted me to go to the poHce station and be 
verified again. That was because I am tall and have 
my tramping boots on, and look unusual. They 
ought to know that spies are short and inconspicuous. 
There is, however, said to be an enormous amount 
of spying being done and a day does not, pass but some 
are hung or shot. 

About three o'clock in the afternoon I got back to 
the great high street of Warsaw — Marshalkovsky — 
and, as chance would have it, saw another bomb come 
down and explode. As I walked down the street I 
suddenly noticed that passers-by began to shade their 
eyes with their hands, and look up into the sunny sky, 
and I looked with them. 

A great bird was hastening forward over the city — 
the shape of a German eagle breasting the air. It 
approached with great rapidity and was soon over our 
heads. The people began to run, now to this side of 
the road and now to that — and I myself crossed over. 
Two moments later there was a flash of smoky fire and 
a deafening report. Lumps of roof flew into the 
roadway three doors up from where I was standing ; 
a bomb had fallen on the top of my favourite cafe, the 
place where I had so often sipped my coffee and written 
my articles. 

Having discharged the bomb, the unpausing aero- 



82 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

plane went straight on across the vault of the sky and 
disappeared. 

An enormous crowd gathered round the cafe and 
talked and questioned. But presently out of the 
horizon into which he had disappeared came the 
Prussian eagle once more and approached with similar 
velocity. There was a great panic in the street, an 
astonishingly tremulous moment. Even soldiers darted 
into imaginary shelters, the tram-drivers were afraid to 
go forward with their cars, cabs with their passengers 
went whither the drivers fancied. Every one had an 
intimate notion of what it would be like to be blown 
to bits. Still, we might as well have stood still. The 
Germans aim the bombs at the crowds or at important 
buildings, but they do not hit their marks. The bombs 
fall on the just and unjust with cheerful impartiality. 
The one we now feared fell two streets off with a hollow 
boom, and killed and injured six people who did not 
even realise there was one of the enemy overhead. 

It is difficult to see what the Germans hope to gain 
by these isolated adventures. Bomb-throwing will not 
help them either to take the city or to keep it when 
taken. The Russians know how to keep the nervous 
population under control in time of excitement, but the 
Germans, if put in possession of the city, would not be 
able to restrain the dangerous element, always rather 
strong in submerged Warsaw. 

These single exploits are merely thrill-producers. 



THE DAY OF VICTORY 83 

The "bombists'' killed and injured fifty-four people one 
day last week ; according to latest accounts they killed 
and injured twenty to-day. At the Vienna station 
one bomb explosion broke £1,000 worth of plate-glass. 
I have no wish to minimise what they did, but what 
earthly effect did the outrages have on the result of 
the battle outside the city? Directly the danger had 
passed the people came out again, and were chattering 
and laughing and picking and choosing fragments of 
plate-glass to keep as mementoes — like children who, 
on the night of the fifth of November, were a little 
frightened by the explosions, but who immensely enjoy 
gathering the squib cases and rocket sticks on the 
morning after. 

On the Tuesday we knew definitely that there was 
victory. It was a day of the clashing of bells and of 
hymns of praise. Warsaw had been saved. Yet such 
a wet and dreary day. The silence that succeeded 
after the days and nights of cannon, thunder, and sus- 
pense was strange by comparison. It was a pleasure 
to realize that the post offices were opening again, that 
the banks would give out money, that telegrams would 
be passed more easily, that the Consuls were coming 
back and the jeweller's shops opening, and yet somehow 
there was a shade of regret as if Destiny and adventure 
had passed us by. 

This melancholy, however, vanished when in the 
evening great numbers of troops returned to Warsaw 



84 RUSSIA AND^THE WORLD 

from the battlefield. In the soaking rain along the 
dark, wide streets the Siberian Cossacks, my friends 
of the Altai among them probably, and with them the 
Caucasian regiments, returned at a quick measure. It 
lasted for hours, but it was not a procession. Every 
horse was trotting, the miHtary carts jogged along 
quickly. The men were woebegone, grimy, bearded, 
soaked. They seemed too tired even to tend their 
horses properly, too tired to take from the extended 
hands of the Poles the offerings they made of cigarettes 
and sweet cakes and bread. They had fought day and 
night for days, taking the chance of death, and then 
the chance of death again, and then again, seeing their 
nearest comrades blasted by shells, stricken by bullets, 
yet not having time to reflect even on what it meant 
to lose so dear a friend ; subconsciously aware even in 
the rush of their valorous deeds that at any moment 
fruitful chance might strike them down from the ranks 
of the striving and living to the heaps of the dead. 
They were all lucky ones, though perhaps in their 
philosophy happiest of all were those who perished in 
the love and service of Russia in the war against an 
evil foe. 



XIII 

Suffering Poland: A Belgium of the East 

So the first battle of Warsaw was won by the Rus- 
sians and the Germans were driven back, and nearly 
all the exchanges and minor engagements following 
that battle were in the Russian favour. By all ac- 
counts, it was the enthusiasm and daring of the peasant 
soldiers that saved Warsaw from bombardment and 
German occupation. 

The struggle over, the body of Poland will rage back- 
wards and forwards for a long time, and the sufferings 
of the soldiers on both sides and of the non-combatants 
will be something unparalleled. War is raged with a 
more elemental brutaHty on this side of Europe, for 
the reason that the land was a poverty-stricken one to 
start with, and because the Russian troops are more 
used to cold and hunger, more humanly persistent, 
more unsparing of themselves. Aheady Russia must 
have lost heavily, but the losses mean little to her. 
She is the men-millionaire who never feels poorer, 
however many men she may spend. The peasants* 
themselves are deeply calm regarding the spectacle 
of suffering and death. Death does not horrify them ; 



86 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

on the contrary, the idea of glorious death is spiritual 
meat and drink to them. They love their brother 
soldier alive, but when he is dead he becomes something 
holy. This makes the Russian almost invincible. 
The only thing that could disturb the enthusiasm of 
the Russian troops would be the idea that they were 
fighting for a wrong cause. Cannon is not their 
ultima ratio. The technical superiority of the Germans, 
who were ready for war at all points, is opposed and 
held in check by the religious bravery of the Russian 
peasants, and by the spirit that prompts them to think 
that every battle can be won at the point of the bayonet. 

But to turn a moment from the struggle of Slavs and 
Teutons, there is another spectacle that claims atten- 
tion, and that is the sufferings of the body of Poland, 
over which these terrible struggles are taking place. 
The condition of the peoples of Poland is almost as bad 
as that of the Belgians. There is only the difference 
that Belgium was a prosperous and happy country to 
start with, and Poland for the most part was miserable 
and poverty-stricken. 

When the Germans first invaded Poland they gasped 
at the filth and poverty of the ghettoes, at the little 
shops where there was nothing worth steaHng, at the 
wretched houses crammed with humanity but devoid 
of wealth and luxury. They surveyed the ragged, 
shivering Jews with horror, and rather than loot their 
houses they set them afire. In the first month of the 



SUFFERING POLAND 87 

war Poland suffered more from fire and lead than from 
robbery. Indeed, even the border frays ceased for 
a while, and all German attention was given to the 
Russian invasion of Eastern Prussia. 

It was only after the retirement of the Russians that 
Poland began to suffer seriously. Every one had been 
lulled to confidence by the Russian advance towards 
Konigsberg, and when the great retreat began the 
pursuing Germans came upon many Polish towns at the 
most unexpected moment. The people, wakened up 
in the night by the fire and tumult and thunder of war, 
rushed from their beds into the streets, got into the 
line of fire and were killed and injured in great numbers. 
The panic was terrible. Many thousands of people 
left their homes and fled, without plan, without counsel, 
into the wild country. There at this moment are starv- 
ing Poles and Jews in great numbers wandering about, 
lost, shot at, accused of being spies, arrested, liable to 
execution. Some have managed to get into trains and 
have gone to the cities of the interior. Warsaw alone 
has 50,000 homeless refugees, and probably every city 
of Russia has at least Poles, if not Jews, in its hospi- 
table care, besides a number of wounded soldiers. 

When the Germans pursued the Russian Army back 
to the River Nieman and advanced and occupied 
South-West Poland, they were bent on revenge. They 
looked no longer disdainfully on the filth and poverty 
of Poland. Orders had evidently been given that every- 



88 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

thing serviceable was to be removed from the country 
— that no rag that might give warmth to the German 
soldiers in the winter campaign was to be left untaken. 
Following the German Army came an innumerable 
train of light wagons, at first almost empty, but at last 
filled — by the process of taking from her who had 
naught even that which she had. At the retreat of 
the Germans from the Nieman, the Russian airmen 
remarked on the hundreds and thousands of wagons 
full of stolen goods traversing the country towards 
Germany, like a sort of dark cloud moving over the 
surface of the land. Germans, dead on the battlefield 
below Warsaw, were found to be wearing the clothing 
of Polish peasants under their uniforms. Some were 
found wearing Russian boots, and many carried 
women's cotton shawls and flannel petticoats. 

In many of the villages in Poland the people have 
buried their boots and spare clothes, with their money, 
and you are astonished to see the PoHsh peasants 
going about with bare feet or in straw sHppers. They 
say that the German soldiers come and pull the boots 
off their feet to put into their forage sacks. Alas ! 
the Germans are as keen as terriers at finding things 
that have been buried, and the peasants when they 
return to villages forsaken a week before, find that their 
things have all been dug up and taken away. Neces- 
sarily, scarcely anyone is earning any wages. The 
factories are all closed owing to the lack of coal. Even 



SUFFERING POLAND 89 

in Warsaw you rarely see a chimney stack with smoke 
issuing from it. And time has been spared by the 
Germans to ransack the warehouses of the industrial 
cities. An onlooker at a large sugar factory saw 
almost a thousand tons of sugar removed in one-horse 
wagons, for instance. At the town of Bzhedin, a 
sweated labour settlement where man, woman, and child 
work all day at the sewing of ready-made overcoats, 
trousers, and so forth, the Germans took off the whole 
stock, and were as pleased as if they had won a battle. 
It is robbery, but the sagacious Germans disguise it 
as purchase, giving in exchange for the requisitioned 
clothing cheques printed in the Russian language and 
payable by the Russian Government. It is hoped that 
the Jews especially will worry the Russians by trying to 
get some recognition of the losses they have sustained. 
But the Jews, much as they abhor the Russian rule, are 
true to the Government on the whole, and start no 
propaganda likely to favour Germany. The Germans 
inspire them with terror. A touching story is told 
of the Jews of Avgustof. The Germans came towards 
Avgustof on a Saturday, and the poor Jews there are of 
the most pious type, who do not light their fires on 
the Sabbath, do no work, and certainly do not travel. 
All the Christians fled — the Jews in consternation 
appealed to their Rabbi for a reading of Holy Writ 
on the point. The Rabbi not only sanctioned their 
departure, but showed them an example by going first. 



90 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

So, last of all, the poor Jews crept out with little 
bundles containing what they felt they must take with 
them — each Jewish family has something valuable in 
the shape of the metal candlesticks which they light on 
Friday night. Then the Germans came into the town. 
The saddest sights in Warsaw and Wilna and Kief are 
the clusters of poor, homeless Jews just come into the 
city with all that remains to them in their hands. 

Of those who have remained behind or who have 
been overtaken by the German invasion many have 
been killed, many maimed by the bursting of shells. 
Many have had their houses burned over them. Many 
have been executed by the Germans as spies. Many 
have died or have become crazed through fright. In 
several towns the Germans fixed up at the street 
corners corpses of well-known citizens, in order to warn 
those who remained behind against betrayal. At 
Chenstokhof the soldiers cut out the famous picture 
of the Virgin from the ikon-frame and replaced it with 
a portrait of the Emperor Wilhelm. This is an exam- 
ple of grim German pleasantry. They have hanged 
alleged spies on the roadside crosses and peasant 
shrines of the highway. And they have also scattered 
from aeroplanes proclamations to the Poles to the effect 
that the Poles should trust them. But the Poles having 
fallen among thieves have little difficulty in deciding 
who is truly their neighbour. Russia is doing all she 
can to help this poor, stricken people. 



XIV 

The Censorship 

If there is one city more than another that has had 
plentiful topics of conversation it is Warsaw. Rumours 
have fled along her streets every day. Not once or 
twice panic has possessed her utterly. Three times 
at least before the end of the year it has been threatened 
with German occupation — three times the Germans 
have been beaten and hope has again danced in the 
breasts of the Poles. 

I think perhaps it would have been better to let the 
people of Warsaw know, daily, the facts of the Russian 
retreats. Surprises are bad for the nerves, especially 
the surprise of waking up one morning and hearing the 
cannonade of the enemy at the gates of the city — of 
the enemy you thought were at least a hundred miles 
away. 

Not only do the Warsaw newspapers omit the facts 
about their city, but the newspapers of Moscow give 
daily more details of the state of Warsaw than the 
actual Warsaw papers themselves. The post may be 
closed for days, all telegrams may be refused, and yet, 
daily, Moscow has intelligence and prints it. 

91 



92 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

This is effected by a simple device. The Warsaw 
correspondents write out their articles and paragraphs, 
make up a packet, take it down to the Brest station, 
and bribe one of the guards of outgoing Moscow trains 
to take it to the old capital and either post it or deliver 
it there. 

Necessarily, the Censor in Warsaw under martial 
law is much more strict than the Censor in Moscow. 
Still, when the Moscow papers arrive two or three days 
after their publication in Moscow and begin to be sold 
in the Warsaw streets, the Censor begins to pass the 
reprint of news from its columns. 

The morning sheets of the city are kept up with tit- 
bits such as, ^' Since the outbreak of the war many more 
male children than female are being born. The ratio 
in Warsaw hospitals is about ten to three of boys to 
girls. This is thought to be Nature's effort to put 
right the great waste of male lives." 

I read: "The events of the last few days have 
awakened the curiosity of the local population, and 
everyone is trying to learn the freshest news from outside 
Warsaw. So, behold the appearance of ^walking news- 
papers' ! Frequenters of the cafes know the type, who 
give much information just obtained from the most 
reliable sources. Many people give credence to these 
stories, and hence arise and spread all manner of 
fables." 

This was in the Warsaw Morning, sl paper that gave 




bo 



S ex 



tiO 



THE CENSORSHIP 93 

no facts whatever; and no matter what happened in 
the city, what sound of fighting was heard, how many 
dead bodies came floating down the Vistula, yet insisted 
that nothing was happening. 

During the war many things have risen in value as a 
result of scarcity, and the chief of them is truth. The 
censorship is used not only to keep secret military 
operations, which is its legitimate function, but also to 
hide from the public all pictures of failure. It degrades 
journahsm ahnost to the position of paid propaganda. 
Not only are failures slurred over and defeats covered 
by euphemisms, but the successes of the other side are 
minimised and laughed at, and their ability to hold 
out is foolishly under-estimated. Commanders invite 
journalists to lend their pen to the cause. 

The best way to help the cause is by giving the truth 
and stating doubts and fears as well as hopes and 
vaunts. The Censor is justified in eliminating panic- 
striking impressions, or the unredeemed horrible facts 
of carnage. But he is not justified in suppressing the 
quiet penetrative thoughts of those who are necessarily 
calmer in their souls than those who are in the thick of 
the fighting. The suppression in Russia of the Russkoe 
Bogatstw and Zaveti, radical and troublesome reviews 
though they be, is, for instance, a little unfortunate. 
Least of all is the Censor justified in permitting the 
campaign of vulgarity by which the minds of the rabble 
are being poisoned. The Germans are not clowns, not 



94 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

vermin, not stupid, not ridiculous. They are an 
extremely well educated, intelligent, serious people. 
Even if in the long run we overcome Germany, and 
humiliate her, we ought to know clearly what the 
Germans were, and how it was they were thus beaten. 

The Germans are a marvellously patient race to 
whom the English owe much of what is hardest in 
themxselves. The English are, on the whole, the justest, 
fairest, kindest people the world has seen ; that is what 
the Union Jack means — fair play, honour, share and 
share alike. The Russians are a singularly noble, wild, 
and simple people. Their soldiers, though capable of 
excesses, are yet the purest-minded, most religious 
people in the war. And yet Germans, English, and 
Russians are hideously and vulgarly depicted in the 
minds of the common people of the hostile nations. 
War itself is stem and noble, but the low campaign of 
those whose minds run to slanders only brings it into 
ugliness. So many men dead, so many dying, so many 
suffering agonies, so many toiling forward towards 
death, so many lost sweethearts, lost husbands, lost 
sons, so many tears and prayers, should solemnise the 
time, and give us, nationally, a noble and restrained 
literature. 



XV 

The Soldier and the Cross 

When the wounded soldier is brought to the hospital 
and laid in his bed, his first wish is that the priest 
may hold the cross for him to kiss. The priest who 
visits every bedside every morning carries a Httle 
cross in his hand, and each poor soldier presses his Hps 
to the centre of it and kisses it vehemently. 

War, to the Russian soldier, is a great religious 
experience. "He liveth best who is always ready to 
die,'' says a holy proverb of the Russians. And readi- 
ness to die is the religious side of war. The Russian 
soldier kills his enemy without religious qualm, yet 
without hate. He does not feel he is doing an evil 
thing to a fellow man — to shoot at him, to charge at 
him with a bayonet. The great reality that confronts 
him is not that he may kill others, but that he himseK 
may suffer terrible pain or may lose the familiar and 
pleasant thing called life. In order to face this the 
Russian has to dive down deep in himself and find 
a deeper self below his ordinary self; he has to find 
the common spirit of Man below his own ego, he has 
to live in communion with the fount of life from which 

95 



96 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

his own little stream of life is flowing. No relic of the 
war is more precious than the little loaf of holy bread 
which the soldier saves from his last communion before 
going to battle or going under fire for the first time. 

The Russian soldiers go to war very much in the 
same spirit as the Russian pilgrims go towards Jerusa- 
lem. Indeed, many a man was just about to start out 
for Jerusalem when the war broke out and he was 
simimoned to fight against the Germans. In the fields 
of East Prussia and of Poland he found as veritable a 
Jerusalem as that he sought in Palestine. It is perhaps 
a shorter way thither. 

The priests serving in the army and in the hospitals 
tell wonderful stories of religious experience, of touching 
peasant mysticism, of holy patriotism. 

A dying soldier Hes on the battlefield and the visiting 
priest thinks him too far gone to receive the Holy Com- 
munion. So he says the Otkhodnaya, the prayer for 
the departing soul. Suddenly the dying man opens 
his dim eyes and whispers just audibly : " My country- 
men, my dear countrymen ... no, not that. Little 
Father . . . my own one . . . thou hast come to 
save me." 

He tries to get up, widely crosses himself, that is, 
from shoulder to shoulder, and from brow to chest, and 
repeats — "Thou hast come to save me." 

There is a short confession as of a child — Com- 
munion. The soldier with a great effort crosses himself 



THE SOLDIER AND THE CROSS 97 

once more, drops back on the wet mud of the battle- 
field, and slips into oblivion, with glazed eyes, set lips, 
but white, cahn brow. The priest bending over him 
lays a cross upon him, and goes on to the next suffering 
or dying one upon the field. 

The Russian religion is the religion of suffering and 
death, the religion that helps you to meet suffering 
calmly and to be always ready to die. Many Catholics 
and Protestants among the Russian ranks ask the 
Orthodox blessing. In the moment of the ordeal they 
know that true religion is never divided against itself. 

The war is the great wmd that blows through our life, 
so that the things that can be shaken may be shaken 
down, and that the things which cannot be shaken may 
remain. Religion is never shaken down by war. But, 
strange to say, the logicians are shaken in their logic, 
agnosticism is shaken, materialism is shaken, atheism is 
shaken, positivism is shaken. The intellectual domi- 
nance is shaken and falls, the spiritual powers are 
allowed to take possession of men's beings. 

"Many is the time," said a priest to me, "that an 
officer has called me to his side and has said, ' I am an 
atheist, I believe in nothing,' but I have confessed him, 
and he has emptied his life to me — to the very dregs — 
and I have put him in Holy Communion, and left him all 
melted and holy." 

WTien the war is over and we give ourselves once 
more to safe life and comfortable life, and we believe 



98 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

again that nothing is more precious than human life, 
many will no doubt lose the remembrance of that true 
religion which was theirs in the hours when they were 
face to face with reality. The cathedrals and the 
churches will not be so full, the priests will relapse into 
the routine of the revolving weeks of the revolving 
Christian year. But still we shall not have lost the 
fruit of the war. The war has touched us as no other 
event could touch ; it has gone deeper, it has got below 
the skins and surfaces which are affected by ordinary 
events, and has stirred depths in the soul. In the 
stress of war parts of our ordinary superficial selves 
have got carried down into the depths of the soul. 
Things that lay hidden in the depths have been cast 
up to the surface. Things long hid have come to light, 
and will continue to come to light as in life we go 
through the gamut of ordinary spiritual experience. 
New passions will be astir in our loves, new flowers will 
blossom in our arts, new intentions will become ap- 
parent in our destiny. We shall read in ourselves and 
in Man new promises. 

I dare to say that this war has been a spiritual 
experience, not only for individual men, but for Man 
himself; not only for man in the branch of the tree, 
but for Man in the great trunk from which in spirit we 
branches all proceed. 

Away in the depths of Man, and from deeper depths, 
proceeds the Almighty Will, in whose fulfilment lies 



THE SOLDIER AND THE CROSS 99 

the destiny of Man and the destinies of men. And 
those who live in communion know that this war is 
no calamity, no axe at the roots, but the great storm 
wind of autumn. They know that the wind has blown 
before, and that it will blow again, scattering leaves 
and branches into the Death Kingdoms, bringing after 
it tears of rain and sleep and peace and life again — 
new life. 



XVI 

School Children 

One of the phenomena which show how popular 
the war is in Russia is the participation of the children 
in the conflict. There is scarcely a town school in 
Russia from which boys have not run away to the war. 
Hundreds of girls have gone off in boys' clothes and 
tried to pass themselves off as boys and enlist as volun- 
teers, and several have got through, since the medical 
examination is only a negligible formality required in 
one place, forgotten in another ; the Russians are so fit 
as a whole. So among the wounded in the battle of 
the Nieman was a broad-shouldered, vigorous girl from 
Zlato-Ust, only i6 years old, and nobody had dreamed 
that she was other than the man for whom she was 
passing herself off. But not only boys and girls of i6 
and 17, but children of 1 1 and 12 have contrived to have 
a hand either in the fighting or in the nursing. 

Whilst I was in Wihia there was a touching case, a 
little girl of 12 years, Marusia Charushina, turned up. 
She had run away from her home in Viatka, some thou- 
sand miles away, had got on the train as a "hare,'' i.e, 
without a ticket. The conductor had smiled on her 



SCHOOL CHILDREN loi 

and let her go on. At Wilna, in the traffic of the great 
PoKsh city, she was a little bewildered, but she asked a 
passing soldier the way to a hospital ; he took her to 
one, and she explained to him that she had come to 
nurse the wounded. At the hospital a Red Cross nurse 
questioned her, and she gave the same answer. The 
nurse telegraphed to the little girl's father, and asked 
his permission that she should remain in the hospital 
nursing the wounded soldiers. The father gave per- 
mission, so little Marusia was allowed to remain. A 
uniform was made for her, and now as the smallest 
Sister of Mercy among them all she tends the soldiers 
and is very popular. 

There was Stefan Krafchenko, a boy of ten, who said 
he wanted to fight the Germans, and so was taken along 
by the indulgent soldiers. He was attached to the 
artillery, and handed up shells out of the shell boxes 
during three battles and came out of all unscathed, 
and glorious and happy. Then Victor Katchalof , a boy 
of thirteen, had his horse shot under him and was him- 
self wounded in the leg during the fight against the 
Austrians below Lfof. Constantin Usof, a boy of 
thirteen, was wounded by shrapnel at Avgustof. 

Perhaps the greatest schoolboy hero of Russia is a 
boy named Orlof, from Zhitomir town school. He 
fought in eleven battles and was eventually decorated 
by the Tsar with the Order of St. George. Whilst 
reconnoitring he came into collision with a great force 



I02 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

of the enemy. He lay in a trench with his fellows and 
fought all day. But ammunition ran very low, and 
Orlof saved his corps by creeping out in the dark and 
finding his way through heaps of corpses to the main 
Russian force. He was under gun and artillery fire 
all the time, but he succeeded in getting across and so 
saved his friends. 

There are many stories of the children left behind 
in the towns and provinces overrun by the Germans. 
I give an amusing one. The Polish name for a certain 
sort of common mushroom is Kozaki, and this led to a 
misunderstanding. A party of German dragoons came 
along the border of a forest, and, seeing several little 
children walking hand-in-hand in the woods, they 
asked : 

"Are there any Cossacks (Cossachen) in the wood?'' 

"Not in this wood," said the children. "But in 
that forest on the other side of the meadow there are 
thousands and thousands.'' 

The dragoons galloped off in a terrible fright. 

These are but random instances of the active interest 
of the school children. The Imperial Academy of 
Science is collecting, and will probably edit and publish, 
all manner of printed and unprinted impressions of 
the war, diaries, minor dispatches or authenticated 
stories of deeds of derring do. When these are issued 
it will be seen to what an extent the children of Russia 
have been fightiLg in this war. In the playgrounds 



SCHOOL CHILDREN 103 

ten years ago war was unpopular. The war with 
Japan did not fire the minds of the young ones — the 
children were all agog then with the idea of revolution, 
so precocious are the young in Russia. 

In the humbler and less romantic life of the children 
who do not run away there is also much that is beautiful. 
In Moscow each school has its own special hospital. 
The children support it, visit it daily. Each child is 
responsible for the linen underclothing of each man. 
At the sound of the church beU which sounds inter- 
mittently in all the cities the children stop their daily 
tasks, pause a moment, remember the battlefields and 
the great struggle, and cross themselves. 

In this way school life is touched in England also as 
well as in Russia. In many country places the village 
church bell rings to remind the people to pray for the 
soldiers. And in London also, even in the poorest 
schools, there is true national feehng and an indi- 
vidual tenderness. When I am in England I fre- 
quently go down to one school and talk to the children 
about Russia and tell them fairy stories. So I have 
little friends away there, and they write to me upon 
occasion. And I hear from little Wianie Drew and 
Dorothy Parker, whose brother has enlisted in the 
Royal Fusiliers, and Lily Straker, who says the war- 
prayer in school '^ partly for my father as well as for 
all the other soldiers," and from Hilda Dunn and one 
or two others, all knitting gloves and making warm 



104 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

things for the soldiers, each writing a letter to the soldier 
who may get the warm thing, putting little notes into 
the thumbs of the gloves, notes beginning, Dear soldier- 
protector and the like — receiving the tenderest letters 
in return from the chance receivers of the gifts. Dear 
children ! Dear soldiers ! 

A nurse was wheeling a baby in a perambulator past 
Buckingham Palace one day last December, and, as 
it happened. Lord Kitchener's motor-car came up at 
the same time. There was cross-trafhc, and the motor 
stopped to let it get past. And it stopped just opposite 
the baby. 

"Salute, Pat !" said the nurse. 

The little one put his wee hand to his brow and 
saluted. This caught Kitchener's eye. And he gravely 
returned the salute. 



XVII 

Trophies 

The interest in all the little trophies of the war is 
great. Soldiers preserve ten pfennig pieces to take 
home to their wives as if they were gold. Buttons 
cut off with bayonets from the German and Austrian 
dead are prized; also regimental facings, bullets ex- 
tracted by the surgeon from their own or comrade's 
wounded body, helmets, swords, pistols, and not only 
these things, but rings and bracelets and watches. 
Some peasants have a good eye for what is really 
valuable. The Poles are the proud possessors of great 
quantities of German lead picked up on the battlefields, 
and also of fragments of plate-glass picked up on the 
pavements of their bomb-stricken capital. The news- 
papers of various cities exhibit many war curiosities 
in their windows, and thus attract great crowds. 
Such a curiosity is the following abridged German 
diary exhibited in the window of the Russian Word 
pubhcation offices in Moscow. It is one of the many 
interesting journals of the war. 

July 31. — War threatens. 

August I and 2. — Mobihsation. Food disgusting. 
Extra pay not received. 



io6 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

August 3. — Our detachment, commanded by Lieu- 
tenant Zimmer, pursues three spies. 

August 4. — We set out for the frontier. Alarming 
news that a division of Cossacks is breaking through 
towards Elbing. Everyone most upset. No Cossacks, 
however, visible. Food impossible. 

August 5. — Two squadrons of Russian lancers 
attack us. We do not answer their fire, the distance 
is too great and cartridges too precious. Each shot 
should bring down one of these swine. We pass the 
frontier. The good high road ends and we plunge 
into a wilderness of sand and stones. Obliged to dis- 
mount from bicycle and walk. At Zelun we confiscated 
seven wagons. I thought to die of laughter. One 
wagoner absolutely wouldn't give up his wagon and had 
to be convinced with the butt end of a rifle. 

Lieutenant Zimmer ordered me to share with him 
my last hard-boiled egg. We put our bicycles in the 
wagons and got on to Lautenburg, where at the Hotel 
de Rome we had a decent supper. 

August 6. — We occupied a village near Lautenburg. 
There was a service going on in the church. Suspect- 
ing that explosives were hidden there, ten men, in- 
cluding myself, were told off to break up the floor in 
front of the altar and search. We had dug down to 
the vaults when alarm was given and we had to return 
to the main body. 

August 7. — We came to Stary Zelun. Destroyed 



TROPHIES 107 

the post office. Threw the telegraph apparatus into 
the water. Local population quite polite to us. 

Two pretty girls here . . . fearfully afraid of us . . . 
Could not make them understand we intended no harm. 

August 8. — Information received that a division of 
Russian cavalry has invaded Prussia towards Neiden- 
burg. We move on towards Ilovo. 

August 9. — Sunday. We advanced towards Mlava. 
South from Ilovo we came under fire. We were in a valley 
and they shot at us from all sides, shot continuously. 

The first to be wounded was Lieutenant Makketanz. 
Wounded in the brow. The second to be wounded 
was Sergeant Derke. Wounded in the stomach. 
The third, Lieutenant Zander. Two wounds in the 
chest. I wonder if he is alive still. The fourth to be 
wounded was myself. ... I was on my bicycle and 
the bullet struck me in the forearm, apparently breaking 
an artery, for the blood flowed from the wound. I 
rushed to Sergeant Kaiser, holding the wound tightly 
with my right hand. Kaiser tied it up. I ran back 
to shelter. Found Ramsdorf lying in his blood in 
great pain. I gave him drink. 

Sergeant-Major Zink is a great coward. . . . It's 
not surprising, therefore, that he hid himself. He was 
afraid of receiving a bullet. Our detachment hurriedly 
retired. We wounded were left. 

In fifteen minutes the enemy appeared. Cossacks. 
Filthy, but very kind. They carried us away. One of 



io8 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

them took possession of my gun. I had, however, 
taken care to break it before they came. 

We were taken to Mlava and treated much better 

than we expected. Dr. K operated on me and 

was most attentive and poHte. I suffered a good deal, 
not being chloroformed. I was looked after by a very 
sympathetic volunteer nurse who spoke German ex- 
tremely well, though she was Russian, the sister of an 
officer at the war. 

To my immense astonishment we Germans were 
allowed to be together in the hospital and talk as much 
as we liked. 

August lo. — Re-bandaged to-day, since my wound 
has been giving me great pain. I retain my conscious- 
ness. As I lay on the operating table I suddenly 
wanted beer. I asked for it. Everybody laughed, and 
I also, because I did not say "bier'' in German, but 

used the Russian word pivo. Dr. K promised 

it me, and in an hour I had it. 

August II. — Wakened by noise of shooting. A 
German aeroplane was circling over the town and the 
Russians were shooting at it. The aeroplane got away. 
Thank God ! 

Learned to-day the name of my beautiful, kind nurse. 
I shall remember it all my life. We are to be sent to 
Warsaw. She has promised to let our relatives know. 

August 12. — Taken in wagons to the train. The 
railway carriages are very comfortable. 



TROPHIES 109 

Next to me lay a Cossack. He was wounded in 
the chest and moaned all day and all night. When he 
drank, water ran out at the wound. Our bullets are 
more vicious than the Russian ones. 

At Novo-Georgievsk we changed trains. Crowds of 
people stared at us, some pitying, some reviling us. 

We received clean underclothing to-day. Glory be 
to God ! 

August 13. — Food good and plentiful, but life is a bore. 

August 14. — Food is good. 

August 15. — Re-bandaged. 

August 16. — Officers come in and talk to us for a 
whole hour. It is very gay. We hope that our good 
sword will win where diplomacy failed. Food good. 

August 17. — We still stand at a wayside station. 
Prussian officer brought in. He has been convicted 
as a spy. He has an estate in Russia and had enter- 
tained German soldiers there. He is to be shot. He 
charges me to give messages to his sweetheart and his 
brother. 

He was calm and determined. 

August 18. — Brought in Lieutenant Riboldt, cap- 
tured. We are all being sent to Warsaw. The 
wounded Cossack is dead ; we watched his funeral. 

August 19. — They say we shall be in Warsaw to- 
morrow. We shall see ! The food is good, especially 
the supper. We had Kletsky last night. 

At this point the diary ended. 



XVIII 

The Evergreens Remain 

What days I had at Wilna tramping in the rain! 
I found myself so much nearer to the war than I had 
been before. The war became more intimate, it 
created and released a musical flood of thoughts and 
impressions, so that all the time I walked I was Hke 
Abt Vogler at the organ. The tramp of thousands to 
conflict and death, the battle music, the passion of war 
and the dance of the orgy, the colours and the flags, 
the emblems and signs, the victories and the terrible 
slaughters, the conquest of kingdoms, the abasing of old 
gods, and the buildmg of new States, blends in the soul 
in one great passionate and appalling music. 

It seemed I scarcely slept an hour any night of my 
month in Poland. I lived two or three festival days 
into each ordinary day, and yet I never grew tired or 
dull. I often said to myself : This cannot go on ; I 
shall have a reaction against this life, and flee away to 
some quiet corner in the Crimea or the Caucasus. But 
the tired moment never came. As Loosha said to me 
one day when I reproached her for spending whole 
nights smoking or talking — "Life has become too 
interesting." 



THE EVERGREENS REMAIN iii 

I read one book over and over again whilst I was in 
Poland, and that was Shakespeare's "Richard III.'' 
I had it in my pocket. That is the use of pocket 
editions. What matter if pockets do bulge ; they were 
meant to bulge with good things. It is a splendid gain 
for any man to have for a considerable stretch of time 
the same book in his pocket, and to read it over and 
over again and so penetrate it, wed it to his life, asso- 
ciate it in memory with the facts of a time. Walk 
with Shakespeare or St. John or Robert Browning, or 
whom you will — only walk with one of them. They 
are not dead : they are lonely ones, they are would-be 
living companions. 

''Richard III." is a play all about conscience, about 
the thoughts and ghosts which rise out of the depth of 
the soul and show themselves in our waking or dreaming 
hours. It is like Dostoieffsky's "Crime and Punish- 
ment" in Russian literature, and is as charitably 
written. It gives the full story of Richard as the other 
does of Raskolnikof, it does not merely dismiss him as 
a bad man. In thinking of the Kaiser whom so many 
hate, it is well to have in mind "Richard III." What 
is more poignant than that speech of Richard on his last 
night when he starts from an evil dream — 

" Give me another horse, bind up my wounds ; 
Have mercy, Jesu ! Soft ! I did but dream. 
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me ! 
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight. 



112 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 

What do I fear ? Myself ? There's none else by : 

Richard loves Richard ; that is, I am I. 

Is there a murderer here ? No ; Yes, I am : 

Then fly. What, from myself ? Great reason why, 

Lest I revenge myself upon myself. 

Alack, I love myself ! Wherefore ? for any good 

That I myself have done unto myself ? 

O, no ! alas, I rather hate myself 

For hateful deeds committed by myself ! 

I am a villain ; yet I He, I am not. 

Fool, of thyself speak well ; fool, do not flatter. 

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues. 

And every tongue brings in a several tale, 

And every tale condem^ns me for a villain. 

Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree ; 

Murder, stern murder, in the dir'st degree ; 

All several sins, all used in each degree. 

Throng to the bar, crying all, ' Guilty ! guilty ! ' 

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me ; 

And if I die, no soul shall pity me ; 

Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself 

Find in myself no pity to myself ? 

Methought the souls of all that I had murdered 
Came to my tent, and every one did threat 
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard. 

By the Apostle Paul, shadows to-night 
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard 
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers 
Armed in proof," 



THE EVERGREENS REMAIN 113 

Is anything of its kind more wonderful than the speech 
of Clarence in the Tower, the teUing of the vision that 

his soul sees — 

" then came wandering by 
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair 
Dabbled in blood ; and he shrieked out aloud, 
' Clarence is come ' — false, fleeting, perjured Clarence ; 
That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury.'* 

How apt to the occasion of the war are a hundred little 
phrases in "Richard III.'' — 

" So now prosperity begins to mellow 
And drop hito the rotten mouth of death." 

or Richard's war speech defaming the enemy — 

"Remember whom you are to cope withal ; 
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, runaways." 

Shakespeare and Dostoievsky remain, and we are glad 
of them. We love them, though we love also many of 
the gentler and nearer who, with the coming of war, 
have become dumb for us. 

Some of the best lines in Hardy's "Dynasts" are 
those wherein he sings of the flowers and butterflies of 
the field of Waterloo, how they are stamped into blood 
and mud and destroyed unnoticed in the great human 
struggle. How miany beautiful flowers and winged 
fancies perish in the hour of lustful and coarse conflict ! 
Not only the flowers and wdnged beauties of the field, 
but the more dehcate things all the world over. The 



114 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

playing of the lute and the guitar give way to the drum 
and the cymbal as in turn these give way to violin and 
organ. The sweet l3Tics of peace give way to battle 
marches and satires, and these give way in turn to odes 
of victory and hymns to the dead. 

A great change takes place in the conditions of 
culture. The sudden chilly autumn strikes down 
upon our luxuriant summer and withers it at a breath. 

''We anxious ask, v/lL1 spring return 
And birds and flowers again be gay ? " 

But for the hour and the month there is winter and 
sleep. Only the evergreens keep awake and rustle or 
dream in the winter wind or peace. So in our culture 
the evergreens remain. 

How dead is modern Russian hterature at this mo- 
ment ! English pubhshing houses, Hke the quern at 
the bottom of the sea which I have already told you 
is grinding out herrings and soup, are still grinding 
out novels and travel books ; but in Russia, owing to 
lack of paper, the strictness of the Censor, and the 
fact that people have no ears but for the war and 
Russia, Russian pubhcation has almost ceased. Some 
of .the best magazines, such as Zaveti and Russkoe 
Bogatstvo have been stopped for the reason of the war. 
The theatres are putting on only old favourites, or else 
tinsel and war-paint dramas of the type of Leonid 
Andreef's play about Belgium and its King. The poets 



THE EVERGREENS REMAIN 115 

have paused. The great ecclesiastical and religious 
discussions that occupied last year have lost interest. 
The ugly novels and plays which feed the bourgeoisie 
have ceased to appear. 

In England and Scotland also, it is noticeable that 
the war has given us a truer perspective and cleared 
away the Lilliputian obstructions of modern life. We 
see Shakespeare great and wonderful again, and our 
mockers of Shakespeare shrink to figures like those 
men made of matches that used to appear on Bryant 
and May's match-boxes. 

I suppose, all over Europe, with the beautiful flowers 
have perished also the rank weeds and fungi of autumn. 
The great tree Shakespeare remains, but the tall, 
jealous, prickly nettle that grew beside the tree has 
withered away. The evil toadstools, scarlet with 
poisonous lure, have disappeared, and the whiteness 
of the snow has covered them, as it were, with God's 
mercy. The trampled mud has hardened, and with 
the season we are glad. 

In England and Scotland we are with Shakespeare 
and Milton and Campbell once more; in Russia, 
instead of the futurist Severanin or the sex-novelist 
Artsibashef, they are back with Dostoievsky and 
Tolstoy. The rot of autumn has disappeared from 
both countries, and there is nothing left but to remember 
the summer and hope for spring — hope for the first 
flowers after the war. 



II 

NATIONS 



II. NATIONS 

I 

Russians 

The Russian peasant soldier regards the enemy as 
vermin that must be destroyed. He has no doubt 
but that he is clearing away something ugly and full of 
evil. He is fighting something pestilential like the 
cholera or the plague. 

The bodies of the Germans and the Austrians He 
rotting on the fields of Poland this autumn and early 
winter and infecting the air with odours. It was with 
difficulty that the Russian soldier could be made to 
imderstand that he must bury them. 

"Bury these corpses," says a general to one of his 
servant soldiers. 

"No, your Excellency," says the latter, "let them 
lie there like dogs, they are not fit to be buried in the 
good earth." 

When I told some soldiers of the sinking of the 
Emden and the capture of von Muller they could 
not understand our leniency towards the German 
admiral. 

119 



I20 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

" Such people ought to be destroyed directly they are 
caught," said one of the soldiers. "He ought to have 
been executed at once." 

In this spirit, of course, the peasant soldier goes 
forth for the Tsar, to any of the Tsar's work, and whether 
it be war against Japan, or suppression of the Trans- 
Caucasian cut-throats in North Persia, or a pogrom of 
a distasteful race, he has much the same outlook. He is 
so unswervingly loyal to the word of the Tsar, or what is 
told him is the word of the Tsar. 

There has been no bandying of wit between German 
and Russian soldiers as there is said to have been be- 
tween German and British. For one thing, the Ger- 
mans do not understand Russian. For another, the 
Russian soldiers are carefully trained not to enter into 
any sort of converse or familiarity with their enemies. 
During the time of the revolutionary outburst in Russia, 
it was indeed rather difficult for ordinary Russian 
civilians to joke or talk with Russian soldiers. You 
could, however, offer them cigarettes. 

This necessarily adds value to the peasantry as 
reliable fighting material. 

Then the religion of the peasant helps him to be 
brave. The Russian army on the offensive is some- 
thing like an elemental destructive force. There is no 
hesitation about the Russians, httle giving of quarter, 
little seeing of white flags, no malice, no lust, not much 
dehght in cruelty, but, on the other hand, no squeamish- 



RUSSIANS 121 

ness. The blood flowing does not turn the Russian 
sick, the sight of the dead does not make him pale. He 
is striking with the sword of the Lord. 

True, the principal function and purpose of war is 
going to kill. And therein lies not only a denial of 
Christianity, but of the primitive Judaic law. "Thou 
shalt not kill.^' But the function of Russian war that 
has struck me most was that of going to be killed. 

When in the Altai Mountains in the middle of the 
consecration service I learned that it was Germany who 
had declared war upon Russia, I felt that the consecra- 
tion was consecration unto death, the strapping of the 
knapsack on the back was like the tying on of the cross. 

The religion of Russia is the religion of death. As I 
wrote in my book on the Russian peasant-pilgrims 
journeying toward the Sepulchre at Jerusalem : — 

"All pilgrimages are pilgrimages to the Altar, to the place of 
death. Protestantism reveals itself as the religion of the mystery 
of life ; Orthodoxy as the religion of death." 

The Russians march to battle as they tramp to 
shrines. Death is no calamity for them. It is the 
thrice beautiful and thrice holy culmination of the 
life pilgrimage. Watch the Russian soldiers at one of 
the many funerals of fallen comrades. They are 
calm and reverent, but it is the calm and reverence 
that are the accompaniment of an exaltation of spirit. 

But the Cossacks are different in their religious tem- 



122 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

perament. They are the descendants of robber tribes 
and mercenary bands. To reaHsewhat the Cossacks 
have been you must read Gogol's "Tarass Bulba/' and 
when you have realised what they were you have a 
notion of what they are. There is much Russian blood 
in them, but there is also much of the Tartar and the 
Mongol. They have not much in common with the 
gentle Slav. Their conception of Christianity is very 
different from that which animates the moujiks. 

The Cossack is always a soldier. In Cossack villages 
every man has to serve in the army — only-sons have 
no privileges. It is rarely that a Cossack is rejected on 
medical grounds, and rarer still his acceptance of rejec- 
tion. By his passport he is a soldier. When he is 
farming he is said to be "on leave.'' The village is 
not called a village but a station, a stanitsa. Almost 
every man in the station works in trousers that have a 
broad military stripe. By that stripe you may tell 
the Cossacks and the Cossack stations in the country. 

As I tramped through several hundred miles of Cos- 
sack country last summer I have a very bright im- 
pression of the people. They have considerable pos- 
sessions of land. The Government pursues a set 
policy of giving the Cossacks land, space wherein to 
live well and multiply. The whole of Central Asia 
and Turkestan is preferably settled by Cossacks. The 
Russian Government trains the men for two or three 
years, and when the time of training has been run 



RUSSIANS 123 

through the authorities propose to them that they 
settle down near the place where they have been en- 
camped. Land will be given them free. They can 
bring their sweethearts and their wives. The docile 
Kirghiz and Chinese and other aborigines can be 
practically forced to build houses for them and dig out 
irrigation canals and plant poplars and willows. A 
company of Cossacks accepts the Government pro- 
posal and so a new station is marked on the map. A 
church is built. A horizontal bar and a wooden horse 
and a greasy pole are put up. A vodka shop is sup- 
plied. And that constitutes Cossack civilisation. The 
vodka shops are now all closed and there is talk of re- 
opening them as schools. 

The talk and the songs and the life of the station are 
all military. The talks are of battles lately and battles 
long ago, and the battles of the future ; the songs are 
recruiting songs and war songs ; the life is ever with 
the gun and on horseback. 

Children ride on horseback as soon as they can walk 
and jump. Little boys get their elder brothers' uni- 
forms cut down tb wear, the trousers be they ever so 
ragged have still the broad coloured stripe that marks 
the Cossacks. Siberian Cossacks have red stripes, 
Don Cossacks have blue stripes. Marching songs 
are on the children's lips, and one of the most frequent 
sights is that of a company of Cossacks riding up the 
main street of the stanitza carrying long black pikes 



124 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

in their hands and singing choruses as they go. The 
pike is another distinction of the Cossack ; it is a long 
black wooden lance which is steel-pointed like a spear. 

No woman grudges her children to the war. War 
is the element in which they all live, and the official 
manoeuvres are so wild and fierce that many get killed 
in them, kill one another even, forgetting that they are 
only playing at war. The Cossacks even in remote 
Asia take themselves seriously as the personal body- 
guards of the Tsar ; formerly robbers and border riders 
of the wildest type, they are now, thanks to tactful 
handling, the most loyal subjects of the Tsar, and are 
bred out on the Seven-Rivers-Land and the Altai 
Mountains, for instance, much as one might breed a 
type of horse, for sterling qualities. They are called 
Orthodox Christians, but have seldom a mystical sense 
of Christianity. They are much more superstitious 
than the moujiks. They hand down their ikons and 
their battle charms from generation to generation and 
worship them almost idolatrously. 

Their homes are neither comfortable nor clean, the 
homes of eagles rather than of men. The women are 
less tidy than ordinary Russian peasant women, and 
eat more and sleep more. 

As a fair companion of the road explained to me : — 

''It's the women must be blamed for the disorder in 
their cottages. After dinner the women always lie 
down and fall asleep, and they leave all the dirty dishes 



RUSSIANS 125 

on the table and let the pigs and the chickens come in 
and hunt for food.'^ 

You enter the little room that is all in all of a home, 
and you find fifty thousand flies flustering over every- 
thing. Often of an afternoon I have entered a cottage 
in order to get milk and have found everyone asleep, 
even the dog, who but opens one eye at the noise of 
my step. The baby lies in the swing cradle and tosses 
now and then, and cries a Kttle. He would be almost 
naked were he not black with flies. The chickens 
keep pecking flies ofl his body and hurting him — that 
is why he cries. None the less, the baby will grow up 
to be a sturdy Cossack. The children are none the 
worse for dirt and disorder, to judge from the fine young 
men we see, tall, agile, hawk-faced, the rising generation 
no weaker than the fathers. 

They are hospitable, but because of the biting 
flies I have found it more comfortable to sleep out of 
doors, even in bad weather, even when mosquitoes were 
thick. They always give you full measure and running 
over when you buy from them. But they are alto- 
gether left behind in hospitality by their neighbours 
the ELirghiz or the Mongolians. 

The Cossack has settled where of old the Earghiz 
had his best pastures. He has harried the gentle 
Eastern into the bare lands and wildernesses and over 
the border to China. The winter pastures that the 
Kirghiz has discovered for himself and marked out 



126 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

with stones the Cossack has pitilessly mown for hay. 
Even his houses, the long village street of them, the 
Cossack makes the Kirghiz build, whilst he stands by- 
like a barin or a master. The Kirghiz will take lower 
wages for his labour than even the Chinee ; he can be 
persuaded on occasion to work for nothing. 

^'You are entering Kirghiz country now; there are 
no Russian villages, no Cossack stations,'^ said one to 
me. "No matter, you can always spend the night in a 
Kirghiz tent and you will always get food from them, as 
much as you want. Don't ever pay them anything. 
They don't expect it. They will give you the best they 
have, but don't pay. You needn't. They are that 
sort of people, glupovaty, stupid-like. It is established 
so with them." 

The favourite adjective applied by Russians to 
Cossack is otchainy, which is supposed to mean "des- 
perate," but certainly does not mean it in the ordinary 
sense of hopeless. It means past-praying-for, wild- 
beyond-all-hopes. 

"The Siberian Cossacks, they are the wildest of all," 
you'll hear. 

They are spoken of by ordinary Russians much as 
the Highlanders are spoken of by us, and ui some re- 
spects they resemble the clansmen. They are brave 
beyond any qualification. They are all expert horse- 
men, and ride like the wind. Their favourite exploit 
is to charge to meet the enemy lying close to their horses' 



RUSSIANS 127 

sides, even to their horses' bellies, so that it looks to 
the enemy as if a drove of riderless horses was plunging 
towards them. And when the Cossacks arrive at the 
object of their charge Heaven help the poor Uhlans or 
ordinary European cavalry and infantry who happen 
to be in the way. The Cossacks deHght in the cutting 
off of heads. 

It was the Siberian Cossacks who turned the scale 
at the first battle of Warsaw, and with them, as 
brothers-in-arms, the Caucasian Cavalry. The Cauca- 
sian tribesmen are, if anything, more warlike than the 
Cossacks, stronger physically, always wearing arms and 
understanding life as military gallantry, having much 
less regard for the value of life, and much more given 
to fighting in time of peace. Murder has no moral 
stigma in the Caucasus ; the man who has killed another 
man is not troubled about his crime, not troubled in his 
mind, not obliged to return and look at the corpse, not 
obHged to confess at the last. Indeed, many of the 
pleasantest and most courteous men you may meet in 
the mountains have several what we should call 
"murders" to their charge. Their success in fighting 
gives them more confidence and more politeness. 

They are not quite so brave as the Cossacks, being 
considerably more intelligent and a very calculating 
people. They consider themselves Liberals, and are 
not so loyal to the Tsar. They are corruptible, and the 
Russian system of bribery has been much improved by 



128 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

them. They are more cruel than the Cossacks, less 
Christian. A fine body of people, however, the hand- 
somest men in Europe, the hardest. 

War for them is also the most interesting thing in 
life, and conversation over the endless stoops of red 
wine always turns to battles. By the way, the pro- 
hibition of the sale of vodka and beer leaves the Cau- 
casus just as drunken as before. The Government 
had no monopoly there in the sale of spirits. Every- 
one could sell who wanted to. Vodka, however, was 
never much drunk owing to the fact that the Caucasus 
has its own good vintage and the natives despise the 
use of spirits as a sign of lower caste. It is noble to 
drink wine, base to drink spirits. 

They are a poor people as money goes. It is mar- 
vellous that they retain their physique considering the 
poorness of the food they eat and the quantity of wine 
they drink. Many villages subsist on black bread and 
wine. They are always hungry. They could live 
much better than they do. They love clothes, love 
rich carpets and elegant ornaments. They would put 
jewels on their wives, would be princes not only in 
title but in estate, and would hold Court and go out 
hunting or to battle with retainers in the good old way. 

The Finns are another people under the Russian 
rule, and Finland one more of all the Russias. Their 
fighting quahties do not call for comment; they are 
brave men, stubborn, obedient, mostly foot soldiers. 



RUSSIANS 129 

Their sympathies are not really with Russia in any- 
thing, and when left to themselves the people develop 
a peculiarly Teutonic type of civiHsation. They are 
clean, orderly, thrifty. In a hard climate they have 
the grace to make the means to live well. They seem 
to me to be a distinct nation, and might well be trusted 
to look after themselves. They have aheady their own 
Finnish money, their own Finnish postal stamps, the 
Finnish language is spoken freely, and, indeed, in the 
villages and small towns it is extremely difficult to 
make oneself understood in Russian. These are the 
outward signs, therefore, of a separate nationality. 

Russia feels that there is danger in Finnish freedom, 
owing to the sympathy between the Finns and the 
Swedes. And the Swedes have been pronouncing 
very bellicose manifestos against Russia in the time 
previous to this great war between Russia and Germany. 
War between Sweden and Russia has been a poHtical 
card for some time. 

Still, Finland, despite rumours at the commence- 
ment of hostilities, has remained faithful to the Rus- 
sian Emperor, and has recognised that it would sooner 
be a Russian than a German province. 

Russia is pulling all together. No one would have 
thought it likely that Russians, Cossacks, Georgians, 
Finns, Poles, and Jews would at any time be fighting 
together in unanimity. But there it is. 

The war has proved a wonderful touchstone for 



I30 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

virtue, a divining rod for hidden gold. It has brought 
out and revealed the hidden quahties in nations and 
individuals. Many people have held that the Russians 
were a noble nation, generous, brave and pious. The 
war brought their quahties out in such a way that even 
the accustomed doubter of Russia has been obliged to 
confess that he may have been wrong. 

The war has given faith. Despite the previous 
horror of war, it is now almost a platitude to praise 
the war. Even in peace-loving England the war is 
recognised as a national blessing, certainly in no sense 
as a national calamity. It has reduced our cranks 
and celebrities to their true dimensions ; it has calmed 
the noisy Ulster squabble ; it has taken our attention 
off our national ill-health and turned it on our splendid 
but neglected youth. It has given us a duty to a 
fatherland and to ourselves beyond the duty to busi- 
ness and position. It has showed us the necessity of 
drilling and holding ourselves up straight, of being 
hard, of prizing discomfort and danger. It has made 
the Empire greater and cleaner, and has given the go- 
by to the cult of go-as-you-please and get-along-some- 
how. 

Unfortunately among those in England who have 
no personal stake in the war, no one fighting in the 
trenches, no one drilling, no one serving on special 
duty, there is a certain amount of apathy and pessim- 
ism. But in Russia there is no apathy. The whole 



RUSSIANS 131 

atmosphere is one of eagerness and optimism. They 
are full of thankfulness for the things the war has 
brought to Russia — national enthusiasm, national 
tenderness, national temperance, and moral unanimity. 
The war has closed the vodka shop ; it has healed the 
age-long fratricidal strife with Poland; it has shown 
to the world and to themselves the simple strength and 
bravery of the Russian soldiers, and the new sobriety 
and efficiency of their officers. It has, in fact, given a 
real future to Russia to think about; it has shed, as 
from a great lamp, light on the great road of Russian 
destiny. Russians have always dimly divined that 
they were a young nation of genius, they have held 
faith in themselves despite dark hours ; but now they 
feel confirmed and certain of their destiny, of their 
progress from being an ill-cemented patchwork of 
countries to being a single body, feeling in all limbs the 
beat of a single heart ; of their progress from quietness 
and vast illiteracy to being confident possessors of a 
great strong voice in the counsels of nations ; of their 
progress from denial and anarchism and individual 
obstinacy to affirmation, co-operation, and readiness 
to serve. As nations go, Britain is like a man of forty- 
five, Germany like a man of thirty, but Russia like a 
genius who is just eighteen. It is the young man that 
you find in Russia, virginal, full of mystery, looking 
out at the world full of colour and holiness and passion 
and sordidness. 



132 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Despite the beauty and self-sufficiency of the old 
life, Russia is definitely committing herself to the new. 
She is going to have a puritan intolerance for sin, she 
is beginning to manifest that passion for solid educa- 
tion that has marked puritan Scotland, America, Ger- 
many. More and more people are going to take up 
with materialism and ethics and agnosticism. Not 
that Russian pilgrimaging or asceticism or religious 
observance can ever cease, or that the mystical out- 
look will be lost; but that Westernism and success 
and national facetiousness and lightheartedness will 
be so much more clamorous. 

I am a great admirer of the popular saint. Father 
Seraphim. He is the Russian St. Francis — he tamed 
the bears and the wolves and the birds of the forest of 
Sarof . He was so holy that bears, so far from hurting 
him, actually inconvenienced him a little by their 
officious helpfulness. But his chief claim to holiness 
lies in his mystical denial of life. He lived alone in 
the forest, wore a heavy cross on his back, prayed a 
thousand days and a thousand nights still kneeling 
on the same stone, he made a vow of silence and did 
not open his mouth to speak for twenty-five years, 
and when the end of the twenty-five years came he 
remained silent for ten years more. Such an act of 
denial is called a podvig, 

I spoke of the podvig this autumn to Loosha, a 
woman friend of mine of whom I wrote in "Changing 



RUSSIANS 133 

Russia/' I was working out the essential idea of 
Russia's religion. 

"I like to think that even now, in all this noise of 
the war, you have in the background of Russia men 
and women who have taken, like Father Seraphim, 
this oath of silence, who will never utter a word whether 
Russia wins or seems to be in danger. It is an astonish- 
ing fact that St. Seraphim was silent throughout the 
whole time of the great Napoleonic campaigns, and did 
not utter a word even in the culminating distress of 
the capture of Moscow in 181 2." 

So said I to Loosha. 

Loosha replied : 

" That is old-fashioned. Seraphim's greater feat, and 
that which did indeed make him a holy man, was when 
at last he renounced silence, and after thirty-five years 
opened his mouth once more to converse, not oracu- 
larly, but kindly and cheerfully and wisely with his 
fellow beings. I think spring is a greater victory than 
autumn. It is a victory over death, whereas autumn 
is a victory over life." 

To this, Western minds will readily give assent. It 
is a purely Western idea. But it is a new feeling in 
Russia. A few years ago Loosha was of opinion that 
she herself was really dead, and that the woman who 
spoke to me was but a shadow, a ghost, something 
without warmth, without heart, without hope. She 
was glad to have conquered life. Now she wants to 
conquer death and win again. 



134 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Russia the silent one, silent for twenty-five years, 
and then silent for ten years more, is either speaking 
now or is about to speak. The spirit moves mysteri- 
ously in her. She begins to know that a new time is at 
hand. 



II 

The Germans 

At Bielostock I met a peasant soldier from Ossovets, 
a dispatch-bearer. "How are you getting on out 
there?'' I asked. 

"They run/' said he. 

"That's an important victory, isn't it?" I repKed. 

"Their Emperor was there, somewhere about Osso- 
vets," said the soldier. "If we'd only known in time 
we'd a taken him." 

"But he would have been in a very safe position," I 
urged. 

" Oh, we'd a had him, even if we had lost thousands. 
If they'd told us, we would have done anything to take 
him. He's more than a flag — he's their Tsar." 

This is the spirit of the Russian soldiers just now. If 
their officers ask them to take a hill they will take it, or 
storm a fort against terrible artillery fire, they will 
storm it. They have got going, they are on the wave 
of a tremendous national enthusiasm. They fight with 
cries and shouts, with songs. They have to be con- 
stantly reproved for marching too fast, and for treading 
on one another's heels at the fording of the rivers. 

13s 



136 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

They need no band, no banjo to "spur the rearguard 
to a walk." They are very heavily clad, clumsily 
shod, burdened with a heavy kit, from which dangle 
pots and kettles. They live on the most frugal diet, 
and do not grumble when they starve. They sleep 
under the open sky these wet, cold nights of autumn. 
They have the longest patience in the world, and yet 
they have also an extraordinary verve and eagerness. 
This is a wonderful combination, emotion on a founda- 
tion of patience. 

The Germans are stubborn, they are persistent and 
determined. They are condemnatory and angry, and 
are capable of a fine rage. They are self-confident and 
plucky. They are what we English call "nasty." As 
brutes they have most in common with the wild boar, 
most vicious and dangerous of animals. On the whole, 
one would back the Germans against anyone in the 
world for sheer devilry. One would also back them 
for their mastery and assimilation of the results of 
scientific invention and material progress. They are 
the most accurate and best-equipped people. 

But it is not the devil in man that wins in the long 
run. The devil in man is terrible, but it is the God 
in man that gives victory and happiness. Nietzsche 
wrote frequently of the "God, devil, and worm in 
man," and mistaken Nietzscheanism always tends to 
the development of the devil in man, exclusive of the 
other two. The Russian, as Dostoievsky wrote, is 



THE GERMANS 137 

the God-carrier. You must appeal to the rehgious in 
him ; you must appeal to his emotions. But you have 
to appeal to the bad temper of the Germans to make 
them go. 

Russians versus Germans is Imagination versus 
Will. Both will and imagination will carry men far, 
but imagination will carry farther. For the imagina- 
tive soldier has his eyes set on an unearthly prize, and 
he forgets his body and all the limitations of his body, 
and goes forward in a state of rapture. 

One of the features of the present life of Russia is 
the going over of a considerable number of Lutherans 
to the Orthodox Russian Church. I was present at 
the receiving at the font of two such converts — a most 
impressive service. They were two women, Russian 
subjects, but German by extraction. It was evidently 
a very great event in their lives — their faces were a 
picture of emotional excitement and childish happiness. 
I suppose many of us who do not formally enter or fall 
away from Churches have in spirit made that transfer- 
ence from Puritanism to orthodoxy. It is always a 
tremendous personal event, the transference of rehgion 
from the intellect to the emotions, the melting of the 
ice of personality, the change from a rigid setting of 
the lips to the filming of the eyes. 

Nietzsche, of whom many random things are being 
said in this the time of our indignation and sorrow, 
detested the modern German puritans. "When they 



138 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

say I am just, it soundeth as if they had said I am 
just — revenged. Thus spake Zarathustra." Nietz- 
sche understood that Germany's self-righteousness 
sprang from a sort of hatred of Hfe and of men. 

I am sorry words are being said against Nietzsche. 
He was one of my teachers ; I learned much of him. I 
am sure many British who have rifles on their shoulders 
to-day have learned of Nietzsche, and have a warm 
place in their hearts for him. They have taken his 
works with them, and Zarathustra in some man's 
breast pocket must have saved him from an evil ounce 
of lead. 

Nietzsche was of Polish origin, and consequently 
nearer to the Russian spirit than to the German. 
Although he seems anti-Christian, he was on the road 
to transcendent Christianity. He was a great admirer 
of Dostoievsky, whose work he introduced to Germany. 
Nietzsche, always half-mad, alternately possessed by 
devils and angels, might have been a character in one 
of Dostoieff sky's novels. For the rest, Nietzsche was 
very fond of the French people, and preferred to read 
his own works in the French translation rather than in 
the original. He greatly admired Stendhal and he 
abhorred Kant. The spectacle of the genius of Napo- 
leon made life worth living for him; the success of 
Wagner so mortified him that it must have hastened 
his madness by ten years at least. He disliked the 
English, it is true, but that was because it was in Eng- 



THE GERMANS 139 

land chiefly that the nineteenth century slept and 
would not wake up. Nietzsche, despite the fact that 
he was a little, nervous man of great physical weak- 
ness, is yet far the most powerful force of his age. He 
seems anti- Christian, he was mistaken in his fundamen- 
tal notion of the coming of the Superman, but his work 
is full of a new poetry. It is insisted that he was 
brutal in what he said about women. That is some- 
thing personal in Nietzsche. Women wounded him. 
With his terrible physical suffering and his marvellous 
vision and passion he was in need of the love and faith 
of a real woman. But it was not his lot to find such a 
woman. He needed a harbour and an anchor, but it 
was his lot to toss ever on the shelterless sea. 

Not a word is breathed against Nietzsche in Russia ; 
too many lovers there have whispered the poetry of 
Zarathustra to one another. There is mistaken Nietz- 
scheanism there, and talk of "all is permitted,'' but 
that is merely the vulgarisation of the age. Almost 
all the noble spirits of modern Russia have drunk deep 
of the wells of Nietzsche. As I said, the Nietzsche 
family sprang originally from Poland. He was really 
a Pole, a Slav — the German spirit is merely the dross 
in his writing. It is the Slavic that is the gold. As 
the great Russian tale-writer Kouprin writes in an open 
letter to Arthur Schnitzler : ''Perhaps you think 
Nietzsche was one with you in your thoughts. No! 
Even we, your present enemies, could not gather in 



I40 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

our souls so much hatred and contempt for you Prus- 
sians as Nietzsche poured forth in his works." 

The true admirer of the Germans was our own 
Carlyle, whom Nietzsche cheerfully dismisses as "a 
muddlehead." Recent visitors to Ecclefechan, Car- 
lyle's birthplace, \vill probably have seen the scarcely 
faded wreaths sent by the Kaiser to the memory of 
the Briton whom Germany honours most. Carlyle's 
belief in the Germans and in their ways was colossal. 
Did he not waste the ripeness of his life poring over 
the musty records of German military exploits? In 
the history of this war, and our re-estimate of the 
Germans, we shall have to reconsider Carlyle and the 
"marching song of the Teutonic nations." 

Maurice Maeterlinck's contribution to the question 
of the destiny of the Germans was one much considered 
in Russia, Maeterlinck holding an extremely high place 
in the esteem of the intelligentia. It was translated at 
once into Russian and much commented upon. It was 
hailed with enthusiasm as giving a strong lead, and 
showing how the West had made up its mind to carry 
the war through to a terrible end. I must say I felt 
somewhat aghast at the hatred of Germany. 

"They will say to us afterwards that the unfor- 
tunate German peoples were only the victims of their 
monarch and their system. That on the Germany we 
know, so cordial and so kind, no blame should fall — 
but only on Prussia — impatient, hateful, aggressive 



THE GERMANS 141 

Prussia. The domestic, peace-loving Bavarians, the 
kind, hospitable dwellers on the shores of the Rhine, 
the Silesians, Saxons, and I know not who else, will 
become at once as white as snow, less offending than 
the sheep on the pasture land. 

"But now, whilst we stand face to face with reality, 
let us pronounce sentence : ^ The German Empire must 
be destroyed as a wasp's nest. The Germans must be 
destroyed as we destroy a wasp's nest, since we know 
the wasp's nest can never become a bee's nest.' 

"If eighty million innocent people support a monster- 
Kaiser, it shows simply the superficiality of their in- 
nocence and the inner falsehood of their nature. 
Should even a thousand years of civilisation pass in 
peace, the subconscious spirit of the Germans will still 
be as it is to-day. It will still be ready to show itself." 

These are significant passages in the Russian ver- 
sion. Its tone is in strange contrast to the contribu- 
tion of our J. M. Barrie, where the spirit of culture 
comforts the stricken Kaiser with the words: "If 
God is with the Allies, Germany will not be destroyed." 

We British have a considerable amount of affection 
for our foe. The soldiers especially are on very good 
terms with the soldiers they are fighting — despite 
white flag incidents, bad German tricks, atrocities, 
cathedral-shelling, cutting out the eyes of the wounded, 
and the like. There is a weakness towards Germany 
latent in our people, even an unfortunate weakness. 



142 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

When Germany is clearly beaten a great many people 
will raise their voice in her behalf. As yet, though, 
Germany has to be beaten. 

Maeterlinck says, "Only from the depths of the 
most fearful and cruel injustice can we see what Jus- 
tice is.'^ That is an astonishingly wrong utterance, 
but it explains the fury of Maeterlinck's condemnation 
of the Germans, and it is a noble explanation. Maeter- 
hnck is a Belgian. How much more angry, how much 
more eager for German blood are the Belgians and the 
French, those who have suffered, than we are ! If the 
fortune of war goes rapidly against the foe, and Bel- 
gians and French get the Germans on the run, there is 
likely to be such revenge and plunder and ravaging 
that those in England who would spare Germany will 
find they have to witness the clearing off of a hate of 
which as yet they have but a sentimental notion. 
Iron has entered the souls of Belgian and French. The 
French have a long score to clear off and they at least 
will not be inclined to make peace till Germany is in 
the dust, till they have exacted to the uttermost 
farthing and the last drop, the treasure and blood 
exacted by the Germans in 1870. In weighing up the 
chances of the later stages of the war let us not under- 
estimate the driving power of French and Belgian 
hate. Later on we shall stand and watch the French 
taking vengeance. We do not perhaps hate sufficiently 
bitterly to do all that they will do. 



Ill 

The Future of the Poles 

A POLISH peasant woman and a Russian baba were 
talking in the train. "What dreadful things the Ger- 
mans are doing!'' says the Russian woman, a heavily 
clothed old wife who has come i,ooo versts by train 
in order to find and nurse her son who is seriously 
wounded. "What things they are doing to women, 
to the churches. They've ruined a great Cathedral 
somewhere, I've read." 

"Yes," says the Polish woman, "and our Pope has 
written against them." 

"A new one isn't he, surely?" 

"Yes, the old Pope died at the beginning of the war ; 
it broke his heart." 

"Trying to make peace among his children, eh? 
Clearly the Austrians are his, aren't they?" 

"Yes, they are ours, too." 

"Ah, how they oppress the poor Slavs, the Czechs, 
the Serbs, the others. Barbarians, that's what they 
are." 

"Yes, barbarians." 

This word all the Russian peasants have got hold of. 

143 



144 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Ask the peasant what he thinks of the Germans. 
^'Barbarians/' he answers. 

But it is an interesting opposition that of Pole and 
Austrian, both Roman CathoKcs. It is rather sur- 
prising that the Poles, extremely pious Roman Catho- 
lics as they are, have no particular sympathy with 
their co-religionists in Austria, and that the Pope 
throws the balance of his power rather into the scale 
against Germany and Austria. The fact is, Rome 
stands to gain far more from the success of the Allies 
than from German domination. German success 
means a stronger Protestant influence in the world 
generally — it means certainly a stronger influence in 
Austria; even the unification of the German and 
Austrian empires is possible. On the other hand, 
the success of Russia means, or ought to mean, I 
presum^e, the establishment of the Poles as a nation 
once more, though under the protection of the Tsar. 
What Rome has lost in France she can make up in 
autonomous Poland (and autonomous Ireland) when 
once the war has ended in the dispersal of the German 
dream of empire. 

Poland, if restored, would be a great Roman Catholic 
country. Of that there can be no doubt. The Poles 
are a passionately national people. Nationalism is 
the biggest thing with them, and in their nationalism is 
included necessarily their religious faith. The Russians 
have tried in vain to Russify Poland ; Poland remains 



THE FUTURE OF THE POLES 145 

crazily Polish. The Poles have emigrated to America 
in enormous numbers, but in America they do not 
tend to enter the choir dance of the races. They live 
together, as I have seen them in the mining villages 
of Pennsylvania, and have their political clubs, and talk 
their own old language, and read their own books, 
and write poems about Poland. They are a very 
poetical people ; every third Pole writes verses. They 
are not in such numbers as the Irish in America, and 
since they are not English-speaking they have not the 
power of the Irish, but by virtue of their poHtical 
organisation they are more like the Irish than other 
races. 

And despite the fact that Poles and Russians are 
equally Slavonic and are psychologically akin, yet how 
the Poles have hated the Russians ! It would be im- 
possible to hate more. The hate of brothers, when 
they do hate, is worse than the hate of those who are 
unrelated. It used to be almost equivalent to an 
insult to speak Russian in a Polish shop, or order your 
dinner in Russian at the restaurant. Now, however, 
things have changed. 

I have just been staying in the fine old city of Vilna, 
a city of courtly Poles, the home of many of the old 
noble famihes of Poland. It is now thronged with 
Russian officers and soldiers. Along the main street 
is an incessant procession of troops, and as you look 
down you see vistas of bayonet spikes waving like 



146 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

reeds in a wind. As you lie in bed at night you listen 
to the tramp, tramp, tramp of soldiers. Or you look 
out at the window and see wagons and guns passing 
for twenty minutes on end, or you see prancing over the 
cobbles and the mud the Cossacks of the Don, of the 
Volga, of Seven Rivers. In the days of the revolution- 
ary outburst the Poles bit their lips in hate at the 
sight of the Russian soldiers, they cursed under their 
breath, darted out with revolvers and shot, aimed 
bombs. To-day they smile, tears run down their cheeks ; 
they even cheer. Whoever would have thought to see 
the day when the Poles would cheer the Russian troops 
marching through the streets of their own cities ! 

The Russians are forgiven. They come now to 
deliver the Slavs, not, as formerly, to trample on them. 
Go into a restaurant and order your dinner in Russian 
and you are smiled at and treated specially. To be a 
Russian is to be a friend. The Russians, also, with 
that complete turn-round of feeling of which the Sla- 
vonic peoples are so capable, are quite affectionate 
towards the Poles. It is said that since the proclama- 
tion of the Grand Duke Nicholas there has been quite 
a demand for Polish grammars and dictionaries on the 
part of Russians wishing to learn Polish. I, for my 
part, directly I read that proclamation, decided to 
learn some Polish, for I understood that Poland had 
suddenly begun to count. 

A very touching spectacle may be seen every day 



THE FUTURE OF THE POLES 147 

just now at the Sacred Gate of Vilna. Above the 
gateway is a chapel with wide-open doors showing a 
richly gilded and flower-decked image of the Virgin. 
At one side stands a row of leaden organ pipes, at the 
other stands a priest. Music is wafted through the 
air with incense and the sound of prayers. Down 
below in the narrow, muddy roadway kneel many poor 
men and women with prayer books in their hands. 
They are Poles. But through the gateway come 
incessantly, all day and all night, Russian troops going 
to the front. And as he approaches, every soldier, 
be he officer or private, lifts his hat and passes through 
the praying throng uncovered. This is beautiful. 
Let Russia always be so in the presence of the Mother 
of Poland. 

No nation in modern history has been treated the 
way Poland has been treated, divided up like spoil and 
given to the three Emperors of Europe — living spoil. 
The history of Poland previous to partition is one of 
splendour and gallantry. A Dumas would have found 
in that history stories as gay and brave as in the his- 
tory of France. The Poles were a bright and interest- 
ing contrast to their neighbours, the laborious Germans 
and the frozen Russians. They were an energetic, 
tireless people; also they would have made out of 
Poland something distinctive. But Fate came across 
them. The wonderful nineteenth century came on 
and Poland was not. Poland was denied the opportu- 



148 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

nities of other powers. England built up her mighty 
civilisation ; Germany grew into form and was con- 
scious of itself, and learned to speak with a strong, 
national voice ; even Russia emerged out of the forests 
and the vast distances and built up a nineteenth- 
century civilisation. But Poland lay under the feet 
of conquerors. 

To such a poignancy did Polish sorrow come, to 
such a degree of historical melancholy, that the PoHsh 
poets of the seventies came to write of Poland as the 
Messianic nation, the nation and the country that must 
be crucified and divided up, that must die and be 
buried. They formed a prophecy that through the 
sufferings of Poland the world would find regeneration. 
The Poles, many of them, learned to participate in a 
rehgious sorrow and find the accompanying religious 
consolation. Poland had to die that the world through 
Poland might be saved ; Poland will rise again as a sign 
that every nationality has an immortality. 

So now in this great struggle wherein the heavens 
are rent over the agony of Teutons and Slavs the Poles 
see a dove descending with the promise of peace. 
Poland is about to rise again. 

The promises of poetry and religion, however, seem 
much more certain than the promises of politicians and 
of monarchs. If we turn from the melancholy beauty 
of this Polish idea to the sharp-edged actualities of 
poHtics, it is possible to feel that the restoration of the 




00 
>-. 

V- 

O 



THE FUTURE OF THE POLES 149 

Polish nation is not so certain, not so likely that the 
providence of the Tsar will look God-dispensed as man- 
dispensed. 

I believe that if Germany is thoroughly beaten in 
the field, and granted not honourable but humiliating 
terms of peace, it will be possible to take German 
Poland from her, and from Austria Austrian Poland, 
though it means tearing them from the living flesh of 
Germany* and Austria respectively, and these may be 
added to Russian Poland and given a constitution 
imder the protectorate of the Tsar. No new monarch 
is likely to be found for Poland, for the simple reason 
that monarchs of small states cause much trouble and 
that the jealousy of the courts of Servia, Bulgaria, 
Rumania, and Greece have caused so much trouble 
and misunderstanding that the Tsar is not likely to 
institute another court. Collective Poland is likely to 
be given a qualified home rule, she will have consider- 
able control over her own finances and expenditure, 
the Polish language will become current at such univer- 
sities as she may prefer to make peculiarly PoHsh, she 
will have power to organise the education of her people 
and to make herself a strong and loyal nation. What 
Mother Russia wants to see in Poland is an eldest son 
at her side. 

Of course, when the war is over, and if the fabric of 

* German Poland takes in Dantzig and Posen and extends to within fifty 
miles of Berlin. Konigsberg, however, does not belong to ancient Poland. 



I50 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

civilisation holds together, Russia has a great, a difficult 
task. It would be much easier to evade her obligations 
than to fulfil them. But she is not likely to evade them. 
There is every indication that she has entered on a new- 
era as far as the government of Poland is concerned. 
Pan Slavism is going to progress positively by way of 
encouraging what is truly Slavonic, rather than nega- 
tively, as of old, by the repression of what was not 
Slavonic. 

When once the war is over, Poland will be one of the 
most interesting countries in the world. All eyes will 
be turned on Russia to see how she will work out the 
great problem of giving Poland restitution. It is a 
problem that will task the genius of Russia, and test 
her patience and gentleness. 

Just to touch on one or two of the difficulties, there 
is the jealousy of the Churches, of the ecclesiastics of 
the churches. The Eastern Orthodox Church has very 
Kttle in common with the Roman CathoHc Church. 
It is indeed nearer to the Church of England than to 
Rome. But it will have to tolerate a fervently Roman 
Catholic Poland, and trust Polish nationahsm to give 
Roman Catholicism what may be called an Eastern 
tinge or complexion. 

The peasantry of Poland are most simple and pious. 
Of the Roman CathoHcs who arrive at Jerusalem on 
pilgrimage, some of the most humble and sincere are 
the Poles. There is a redeeming touch of mysticism 



THE FUTURE OF THE POLES 151 

in Polish religion. Though the Church accepts the 
responsibility for all dogma, and would reheve the 
lay person of discovering anything for himself, or of 
learning anything individually in his heart, yet by 
nature the Pole has visions, sees the mystic side of 
things, and has gleams of natural rehgion. Of course, 
the political influence of Rome will be greatly suspected 
by the Russian authorities. But everything is to be 
gained by trusting the Poles, rather than by mis- 
trusting them. 

The Government of Russia will fear that under the 
cover and protection of autonomy the Poles will be 
able to conspire effectively for complete independence. 
Conspiracy is congenial to the minds of the Poles — 
they have been great conspirators and plotters — 
though necessarily PoHsh plots have up to now, thanks 
to the vigilance of Russian police and the power of 
Russian armies, had very little success. It is diihcult 
to believe that when the Poles have extra chances they 
will not work together for a complete national independ- 
ence, for an army of their own, frontiers and tariff- 
barriers between them and Russia, foreign alliances 
and the rest. This fear may easily lessen the amount of 
freedom granted to Poland. 

One stumbling block is the mutual jealousies of the 
Churches, another is Polish ambition, a third that I 
may mention is the presence in Poland of almost all 
the Jews in the Russian Empire. There is no love 



152 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

lost between the Jews and the Poles. They have been 
fellow-sufferers and have merged their personal dislike 
of one another in their common hatred of the Russian 
autocracy. But that is all: the establishment of 
several million Jews in Poland has been one of the 
injustices towards Poland. There are considerably 
more Jews than Russians in Poland — the country 
has rather been Judaised than Russianised. Jewry 
has given to Poland its characteristic complexion. In 
many districts the Jews outnumber the Poles. 

The Jews will hope to profit by Polish emancipation, 
and realise themselves as a nation in Poland. That 
is a danger. It would mean the continuous persecu- 
tion of Poland by the Russians, who, as long as they 
remain Christian in the Byzantine sense, will always 
be in opposition to Judaism and that materialism for 
which in their eyes Judaism stands. Jewry must keep 
only a second or third place in Poland. To the estab- 
lishment of that end greater facilities for emigration 
to the United States will probably be afforded the 
Jews. There the Jews are greatly in the ascendant, 
and are indeed realising themselves as a nation as never 
before. Western Christianity, with its insistence on 
ethics rather than on rehgious sense, finds nothing in- 
compatible in Judaism. America is for Russian Jews, 
as Mary Antin pointed out, the true promised land. 

The Jews, with that sweet reasonableness, kindness, 
and common sense which distinguish their life when 



THE FUTURE OF THE POLES 153 

they are not too embittered by persecution, will perhaps 
see that no good end is served by fanning malice against 
Russia, and they will turn their eyes rather towards the 
West than towards the East. So Poland will escape 
Jewish predomination, and also political deprivations 
on account of Jewish conditions. 

But this statement of the case is all on the assump- 
tion that German and Austrian Poland will be added 
to Russian Poland. We leave out of account the 
possibility that Germany may not be so utterly beaten 
that she will be forced to part with a great stretch of 
thoroughly Germanised territory. If the war leaves 
the old Eastern frontier line untouched, Russia will not 
feel that she is in a position to resurrect Poland. For 
she would only have charge of a third of the old Polish 
land. One thing, however, is certain, even under these 
conditions, and that is Polish and Russian friendship. 
Russia will do what she can for her Polish subjects. 
As we all hope for complete victory in the strife, so we 
look beyond the struggle to one of the first fruits of 
peace, the reconstitution of the ancient land of Poland, 
the sewing together of the mantle that the Emperors 
divided between them. 

For the time being, however, the hurly-burly rages. 
The Russians are noble in war, and Poland waits, 
gently hoping, and fearing also, like a woman who is 
to be married if her soldier comes home safe from the 
war. 



IV 

The Future of the Jews 

Russia's great instinctive struggle is against Western- 
ism. She has a great treasure in her national life, but 
she does not know how she came by it and does not 
know how to keep it. But she continually notices how 
she is losing that treasure, how it tends to slip away 
from her, and she makes great clumsy efforts to save 
herself and it. Hence much that is unnecessarily 
barbarous, much that is unjust and even stupid in the 
regime of Russia. Hence, for instance, the great ritual 
murder trial at Kief. Nothing could have been more 
clumsy and impohtic than this trial, and from a Western 
point of view nothir^g more unjust than its intention. 
The prosecution was an act of hostility against the 
Jews in Russia, an attempt to hasten the exodus of the 
Jews to America, and to put in a worse position those 
who remained behind. For the Russian patriot cannot 
tolerate the Jew — he sees in him the whole instinct of 
materialism and Westernism and commercialism. 

The Jews, especially in their new awakening, are a 
Western nation. They find their natural home in 
America. Zionism, despite the sincerity of Jewish 
Zionists, is a sentiment alism with many Jews, bluff 

154 



THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS 155 

with others. The Jews can never settle in great 
numbers in Palestine. But in America they already 
tend to be a dominant factor in the population of that 
country. Our British blood-relationship with the 
Americans, it may be said in passing, is something 
decidedly on the wane. The Jews to-day are on the 
up-grade. They are not being persecuted so much as 
of yore ; indeed, on the contrary, as employers of 
labour they begin themselves to persecute others. Be 
that as it may, they are availing themselves of all the 
opportunities of civilisation, and going forward to be 
masters. They are not so earnest in their religious 
rites, not so exclusive of the Gentile, inclined to marry 
into Christian families — even in Russia they are 
accepting baptism in considerable numbers. All good 
Russians must wish the Jews Godspeed when they see 
them embarking for America at Libau, not because they 
are an evil people or accursed, but because with their 
genius and their assumed humility they have ever been 
a great danger to the Russians. It is a truism to say 
that if the revolution succeeded, or if freedom were 
granted to all the peoples, the Jews would overrun 
Russia, and all the secular power would fall into their 
hands. 

As Christians denying the world it is difficult to see 
on what ground Russians trouble themselves so much 
about worldly conditions. They are positively afraid 
of the Jews. 



156 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

One said to me: "How your country is falling into 
the hands of the Jews : your Lord Chief Justice is a 
Jew/' 

"Isn't it splendid," said I, "the head of the Law is 
a Jew. Now, if a Jew had been appointed Archbishop 
of Canterbury we might have had cause to complain/' 

What has a true Christian got to do with law ? When 
he goes to law, he ceases for the time being to be a 
Christian from the Eastern or Byzantine point of view. 
Now, the Jews understand law and the judgment by 
a code, and law is one of the professions best suited to 
their temperament. The Jews are good lawyers, good 
bankers, brokers, commercial travellers, shipping 
agents, chess-players, mathematicians, and also good 
musicians. The weak spot in their materialistic 
armour is music. Through music they find access 
sometimes to the things of the spirit. We should not 
feel their success at law — like goes to like. 

"A scandal, however," said my friend. "What 
justice can there be between Jews and Christians? 
Their Talmud tells them that any means against the 
Christian are justifiable" — and so on, the whole 
anti-Semitic diatribe now stale by repetition. 

But to revert to the case of the ritual murder trial. 
A Christian boy had been found done to death in a 
horrible fashion, his veins cut in a special way with 
knives, forty wounds in his body — the position of the 
wounds having evidently some sort of mystic signifi- 



THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS 157 

cance. Beiliss was innocent ; but someone was guilty, 
a madman or a Jew, and indeed the probability is 
that a Jew did actually commit the crime. Whether 
it was for ritual purposes or not is another matter. 

Most people would agree that it was a great mistake 
on the part of the Russian Government to fight the 
Jews on the count of the murder of a Christian child. 
If among the illiterate and savage Jews that dwell in 
the remoter parts of the Pale there should exist dark 
sects in whose rites child-sacrifice, Moloch worship, 
and the like, are practised — it is merely a curiosity 
among religions of contemporary Europe. But the 
great quarrel of Russians with Jews is not on that 
ground. They would willingly spare the Jews an 
accidental Christian child now and then. No, it is 
with the Jewish business spirit and Jewish enmity 
towards Christianity and towards the "unprofitable'^ 
Christian life, that the Russian has his quarrel. 

The main result of the trial was that it brought the 
question of anti-Semitism to the touchstone of common 
sense. Up till now Jews have been hated or protected 
emotionally, but throughout the world there has 
naturally set in an intellectual inquiry into the merits 
or demerits of the anti-Semitic case. The most 
significant thing about the Beiliss trial was that the 
Jewish people had the power to obtain from a court 
set on injustice the verdict of "Not Guilty." It 
proved that for the time being the argument of ph3^sical 



158 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

force was not available against the Jews. It turned 
the question into the channels of the Press, the pam- 
phlet, the ordinary conversation. Henceforth there was 
much less chance of pogroms. 

Russia has to decide why she hates the Jews. Obvi- 
ously she does not hate them because they occasionally 
murder a Christian child — that is an absurdly Western 
reason, even if the fact were true — that is only the 
red flag of the massacre, the pretext, the inevitable lie 
in whose name murder is committed. There is some- 
thing much deeper in this great national animosity, 
something which logic and common sense cannot get 
over. 

There are two parties in Russia; an enormous one 
that distrusts the Jew and believes evil of him, a small 
one which protects him. But as regards "ritual 
murder" it is, of course, a comparatively small number 
that believes the Jews are guilty of the practice. 

One of the most interesting phenomena of the time 
has been the persecution of the brilliant anti-Semitic 
pamphleteer Rozanof, one of the contributors of the 
Novoe VremyGy and a writer recognised by everyone as 
being in the foremost rank in Russia. His primary 
feeling about the Jews may be summarised from a book 
of his confessions. Fallen Leaves, 

"The Jew always begins with service and serviceableness 
and ends with power and mastership. In the first stage he is 
difficult to grapple with. What are you to do with a man v/ho 



THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS 159 

simply stands and puts himself at your service? But in the 
second stage no one can get equal with him. Countries and 
nations perish — 

"The services of the Jews are like nails in my hands, the 
' caressingness' of the Jews burns me like a flame. For profiting 
by the one my nation perishes, and blown upon by the other my 
nation rots and dies. We are all running to the Jews for help. 
And in a hundred years all will be with the Jews." 

This was written long before the Beiliss case. During 
the trial Rozanof came forward and contributed to 
the Novoe Vremya and other papers a most substantial 
account of the ritual practices of the Jews. Credit 
must be given him for extraordinary research. He had 
gone into the depths of black magic as propounded in 
almost inaccessible volumes on occultism, and had 
come back with a circumstantial case against secret 
sects of the Jews. He explained the hieroglyphics of 
the wounds of Yushinsky. He insisted that the great 
agitation made by the Jews was due to their fear that 
their secrets were about to be unveiled, and bringing a 
wide culture and incisive journalistic wit to bear on 
the subjects he certainly convinced many who wished 
to be convinced, and, on the other hand, set a most 
influential band of Russian writers and thinkers against 
him. 

Merezhkovsky and Struve and several other members 
of the ReHgious and Philosophical Society of St. Peters- 
burg, one of the most important literary societies in 



i6o RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Russia, protested against the membership of Rozanof, 
making a motion to expel him, enforcing the motion by 
threatening to withdraw themselves if he were still 
allowed to be a member. They could not continue 
to work with a man who held such opinions. The 
motion was defeated, but Rozanof on his own account 
resigned. Jew-lovers are also ready to persecute ; pro- 
Semitism has its victims, as well as anti-Semitism. 
Rozanof has lately collected his articles into a book, 
"The Relation of the Jews to Blood," and several 
Liberal newspapers have refused advertisements of it. 
It is a very powerful, interesting, and curious volume. 
It is rather difficult for a Russian to read it without 
being shaken. But then the practice of drinking blood 
and the existence of secret rites is a commonplace to 
the Russian, and his mind is prepared for a serious 
consideration of ideas which in the West have no 
countenance. The Jews have never been found sac- 
rificing Christian children in England or America, and 
that necessarily binds the Anglo-Saxon race in the 
belief that ritual murder is a myth. 

The question remains : Why are the Russians so 
antagonistic to the Jews ? All Russians know a Jew at 
once by his face and his manners, so intense is the dis- 
like of the type. There is something more in it than 
the arguments of this curious cause celebre. I think it 
is due to the fundamental opposition of the Jewish 
character to that which is most precious in the Slav. 



THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS i6i 

The Tartar in the Russian is a similar type to the Jew — 
and indeed many hold that the Russian Jews are not 
Hebraic, but simply the descendants of Tartar converts 
to Judaism. The Tartar gets on happily with the Jew, 
but the fundamentally Slavonic, the mystical, the care- 
less, that part of the soul of the Russians which makes 
them like the Celts in temperament, cannot agree with 
the Jew. To him the Jew is poison. Russia considers 
its Tartar nature the lower nature. All love of Russia 
and pride in Russia is love of the other and pride in 
the other. All that is precious in Russian life, art, 
literature, music, religion, springs from the other — the 
gay carelessness, the despising of material possessions, 
the love of the neighbour, the mystical. 

The Jews, with their grasp of trade, their sympathy 
with Westernism and contempt of Easternism, en- 
danger the Russian ideal. They have an immense 
power in the Press; the Russian Government there- 
fore keeps a strict censorship over the Press, flinging 
editors into prison right and left, confiscating numbers 
of journals, inflicting huge fines. The Jews are strongly 
entrenched in the legal profession, and are credited 
with making immense fortunes by dubious means — 
and Russians revenge themselves weakly by exacting 
heavy blackmail when they can. The Jews in the 
secret poHce bought and sold the revolution ; witness 
the cases of Azef and Bogrof. The Jews are the main 
manipulators of emigration to America and elsewhere, 



1 62 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

having a regular business of procuring passengers for 
the transatlantic shipping companies, conducting the 
passportless across the Russian frontier, obtaining 
premiums from South American trust companies for 
providing gangs of workers. They are too clever for 
the Russians, or Russians are too easily corrupted. 
The consequence is that no broad legal measure is 
ever carried out in such a way as to stop the practices. 
The result of this Russian impotency is irritation and 
petulancy on the part of the clean-handed, and inflamed 
'mahce on the part of the bribe-takers. Because of 
this which cannot be tracked down and settled between 
the Jew and the Russian, the latter has recourse to 
wanton massacre, to trial for ritual murder and the 
like. The proscription of Rozanof marked an inter- 
esting development in this hostihty. Liberal Russia 
will perhaps make up her mind to protect the Hebrews, 
and the Duma of the future will perhaps free them and 
put in their hands what is their due — business and the 
law. But how will the Church and the aristocracy 
and the poor religious mystical peasant put a bridle 
on the power that money and the law would eventually 
give the Jew in idle Russia? 

The war raises the question of the rights of Jewry 
in another form. It has come about that the Russian 
and British Governments are in alliance. The Jews 
have been working against the possibility of such an 
alliance for many years. They have used every 



THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS 163 

opportunity to cultivate the British and American 
peoples in the abhorrence of Russian Government. 
But behold, thanks to Germany's hate of England and 
the maturing of that hate to war — we are all friendly 
towards Russia. The campaign of the Jews and those 
whom they had converted to hatred of Russia is badly 
left. If it could have been possible for England to 
remain neutral in this conflict, there would undoubtedly 
have been a great campaign of defamation of Russia. 

England, however, has great sympathy with the 
Jews. If the Russian authorities allow massacres, or 
if such mistaken prosecutions are insisted on as that 
of Beiliss, England will be cold towards Russia and 
Russia will feel her coldness. Russia should know 
this. 

The great question is : Is Russia going to do any- 
thing for the Jews when the war is over ? Many think 
that Russia has promised emancipation, but, of course, 
she has not. The Jews are conducting a very effective 
propaganda in the Press, watching, criticising, correcting 
all the statements made about the Jews by journahsts 
and authors. Unfortunately, of those who write about 
Russia very few have any clear idea either of Russia 
herself or of the Jewish Pale; they either depict 
unrelieved horror, or they talk of their personal dislike 
of the Jewish type, Jewish ways, Jewish clothes, and 
so on. Consequently, the correcting of journalism is 
a very useful way of propagandising. 



i64 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

The Jewish difficulty is that the Poles have been 
promised something as Poles, but the Jews have been 
promised nothing. The Belgians, the French and the 
British promise themselves certain rewards on the day 
of victory, but the Jews as Jews have been promised 
nothing at all, and cannot promise themselves any- 
thing. Jewry has made up its mind that though it 
has not been promised anything, it intends to get 
something out of it all. 

With that end in view the Jews lay emphasis on the 
loyalty of Jews and on the exploits of Jewish soldiers. 
They are entitled to do so. There are thousands of 
Jews fighting in the EngHsh, French and Belgian 
armies, not, of course, as Jews but as British, French 
or Belgian subjects respectively. There are tens of 
thousands serving in the Russian army. There they 
are serving as Jews rather than as Russians — for a 
Jew is denied many privileges of Russian nationahty. 
But of course the Jew is compelled to serve — he has 
no say in the matter. 

An Enghsh correspondent writes to me that we must 
remember that the Russian Jews could have remained 
neutral if they had chosen. This shows the sort of 
notion that gets abroad through partisan propaganda. 
The Jews had no choice in the matter. They might 
have rebelled and so been shot down under martial 
law — in that sense only had they a choice. 

The pro- Jewish propaganda insists on the heroism 



THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS 165 

of Osnas, whom the Tsar decorated, and on the valorous 
deeds of the Jews serving in the Russian army. They 
point to the suffering and death of many Jewish soldiers, 
and also to the privations of Jewish families in the dis- 
tricts ravaged by the Germans, and they say : Does all 
this go for naught ? Every true EngHshman's answer 
is, It ought not to go for naught; the Jews should 
be shown exceptional kindness when the war is over. 

But there is another side of the argument which is 
not indicated in the propaganda. It is that there are 
also thousands of German Jews fighting in the German 
army, and fighting as well, suffering as much. There 
is also a great number of Jews in England and America 
who in season and out of season pursue a propaganda 
against Russia, chilling the friendly spirit which at pres- 
ent exists between Russia and the other alhes. The 
Russians have been staunch and loyal friends of the 
English and French, and have withstood all manner of 
seductive proposals made to them by the Germans 
with the object of detaching them. The Jews cannot 
at present claim that they are helping our cause very 
much. Still, that is no reason why the Jews should be 
done injustice or rendered liable to further persecution 
in Poland. It is to be hoped that within the Jewish 
Pale they will be granted certain privileges of education 
and emigration, and that they be better safeguarded 
from the individual malice of Jew-baiters. 

The question of what Russia is going to do for the 



i66 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Jews was put to me lately by one of our most distin- 
guished British Jews, the Lord Chief Justice. I give 
the conversation. Imagine the glittering, clear-cut 
features of one who has been eminent in law, poHtics, 
and finance. I find myseK sitting next to him one 
night, at dinner. 

We talked of the prospects of Poland's autonomy, 
and then at last . . . " There is one question I should 
like to ask you specially,'' said my neighbour, "that 
is, what do you think is likely to be the position of the 
Jews at the end of the war? Do you think anything 
will be done for them?" 

"Not very much," I answered. "They will not 
obtain freedom to go where they wish in the Russian 
Empire. The Russian Church without wavering is 
against the Jews, and, as you know, the Court itself 
not only has no tolerance for the Jews, but is ready to 
believe anything against them, anything like the ritual 
murder, for instance. One thing I gather: they are 
likely to be excused mihtary service." 

"As a privilege?" he asked. 

"Yes, of course as a privilege, not as a new depri- 
vation. The Jews are strongly against mihtary 
service." 

Then the conversation dropped for a few minutes, to 
be taken up later. 

I turned to my neighbour and asked : 

"Is the Government likely to ask for special clauses 



THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS 167 

in the treaty of peace safeguarding Russia's treatment 
of the Jews?" 

"We shall not have to conclude peace with Russia, 
who is our ally, but with Germany,'' was the answer. 

"But the Jews are making a great deal of propaganda 
just now. They are showing a great deal of distrust of 
Russia, and they evidently intend raising the question 
in a very formidable fashion when once peace is in 
sight." 

"I think perhaps America may put forward some 
proposition." 

"What do you think can be done?" I asked. "The 
Jews cannot reahse themselves as a nation in Christian 
Russia, they don't seem very much pleased with what I 
wrote in The Times about their reaHsing themselves as a 
nation in America. Have you any personal behef in 
Zionism?" 

He did not seem to think it likely that the Children 
would return to Palestine. 

Nevertheless, the air just now is full of prophecy about 
the return of the Jews. The Jews themselves are 
whispering much about the fulfilment of the old proph- 
ecies, and though it is not likely that the Rothschilds 
and the great financiers will go to Jerusalem, I beheve 
there may be something in the possibility of the re- 
establishment of the Jews in Palestine as a nation. 

One of the possibilities of the war is the fall of the 
Turkish Empire and the liberation of Syria from the 



i68 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Mohammedan yoke. Palestine becomes vacant, or at 
least eligible for a new Government. It seems to me 
that something might be done for the establishment of 
the Jews in Palestine. 

The Jews won't go there all at once. That is evident. 
But a Jewish Government might be formed there of 
financiers and representative Jews. Once a Govern- 
ment has been formed, it could be made optional for 
the Jews to give up their various European national 
papers and become Jewish subjects. Russian Jews 
could then cease to be Russian subjects and become 
Jewish subjects; German Jews could become Jewish 
subjects, and so on. They would have the financial 
and moral protection of their own Government. They 
could in time form a democracy in Palestine if they 
wished it ; they could have their own army and navy 
if necessary. 

This would be a great blessing to the world. Already 
the chief reason that the Russian peasant has for calling 
the Jew accursed is that he has no land of his own. For 
instance, when the Russians were retreating in Poland 
I asked a common soldier the reason. His answer was 
— " The Jews betray us. That's what comes of having 
an accursed people without any land of their own; they 
dog our steps and sell us at every turn. If we are 
winning they come round us and praise us and try to 
help us ; if we begin to lose they run to the enemy and 
say, ^ Don't you ill-treat us; we are your friends: we 



THE FUTURE OF THE JEW 169 

can help you; we have valuable information.'" The 
Jews ought to have a place of their own and a Govern- 
ment of their own. They ought not to be always 
fighting for their separate interests in the life of foreign 
nations. They are a great people, and are now, as 
never before, on the up-grade in civilisation. They 
ought to be officially united. The world of Gentiles 
also is interested to see them as a nation, and would 
welcome any steps the Jews would take towards the 
realisation of themselves as such. 

The brevities of the Jewish situation may be stated 
thus: 

(i) Russia has promised little to the Jews and 
will give Httle. 

(ii) England has sympathy with the Jews, 
(iii) America will help the Jews if she can. 
(iv) The Jews are working hard for themselves, 
(v) I suggest that if the Turkish Empire falls a 
Jewish Government should be established in Pales- 
tine, and Jews all the world over should have the 
option of becoming Jewish subjects. 



Turks 

The covetousness of Turkey has overcome fear of 
consequences, and her perennial enmity has matured 
once more to war. Behold, in addition to the wild 
strife of Europe, another Turkish war. Belgium has 
been overrun and ruined, Poland has been overrun, and 
the Caucasus and Crimea are to have equal ruin with 
these unfortunate countries — massacre, devastation, 
robbery. Not only the Caucasus and Crimea, but also 
Syria and Palestine, where are large colonies of Russians 
and Enghsh, and many French and Belgians with com- 
mercial interests. The wealth of Beirut, Sm3a*na and 
Jaffa is to a great extent European wealth. The 
powerful Russian settlement in Jerusalem is in danger, 
and also the lives of the gentle and cultured British 
who are attached to the English mission. 

The war is a continuous calamity for non-combatants 
— a campaign of organised plunder and loot. It will 
hardly be Turkey's pohcy to fight pitched battles, and 
so be beaten in the field. She will rather avoid the 
Russian troops, seek out unprotected districts, and make 
inroads. The great Russian army mobilised in Trans- 

170 



TURKS 171 

Caucasia is bound to have victories but they will not 
cause much anxiety to the Turks ; the natural difficul- 
ties in the way of conquering Asia Minor are almost 
insuperable. A small force of irregulars and Turkish 
brigands could keep a great army employed for a long 
time. The native Turkish population is very hostile 
and warhke, and there is the prospect of protracted 
guerilla warfare. I do not see Russia getting to Con- 
stantinople by way of these mountains and deserts. 
It's a long, long way. The first phase of the Russian- 
Turkish conflict depends on the success or failure of 
the Black Sea Fleet. If the Turks and Germans sink 
the Russian warships, such as they are, they can choose 
what points they like on the long line of seashore, and 
bring up their barbarous troops and make inroads and 
pillage. Many such inroads have already been made — 
to judge from private correspondence I have seen — 
but the Russian Censor suppresses all details. But if 
the Russian fleet disposes of the Turkish and German 
warships, Russia can land troops much nearer to 
Constantinople and the heart of Turkey. Unfortu- 
nately, owing to the security of the Bosphorus, the 
Turks have a retiring place as good as the Kiel Canal 
in the other theatre of war. If the Turkish fleet is 
cautious it can prolong the struggle indefinitely. 

Should the Turks obtain ascendancy in the Black 
Sea, the chief towns to suffer would be Odessa, Batum, 
Novorossisk, Poti, and Theodosia. The town of 



172 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Sebastopol is probably impregnable; Kherson and 
Nikolaieff are somewhat difficult of access. The ports 
of the Azof Sea, the most important of which is Rostof- 
on-the-Don, have been saved by the shallowness of 
the sea and the early date of freezing. Rostof is the 
railway key of the Caucasus and a wealthy and im- 
portant place. 

All has changed since the days of the Crimean War. 
The Black Sea offers many targets, and Russia is 
much more vulnerable here. I have walked almost the 
whole of the Black Sea shore, from Sebastopol to Batum, 
a thousand miles and more, and so know it with unusual 
intimacy. It is poor country, but there are many prizes 
for pirates. There is a whole chain of watering-places ; 
there is the Tsar's favourite estate of Livadia, where 
the happiest hours of the Tsarevitch have been spent ; 
there is Yalta, the favourite winter haunt of the aristoc- 
racy; there is the great monastery of New Athos, 
destroyed by the Turks in 1870, but built again over 
the ruins of the old building, and now one of the great- 
est institutions of its kind; there is wonderful little 
Gagri, with its rich villas, all ready to the hand of the 
spoiler, like bunches of wild grapes. There are no 
fortifications, no soldiers. Already even the inhabi- 
tants of the seashore villages have fled; the Turkish 
knife is known and feared. 

But it is not only the Turks who are feared, but 
the Mohammedan tribesmen of the Caucasus, very 



TURKS 173 

dangerous people even in time of peace ; the Abkhastsi, 
the Mohammedan Ossetini, the Ingooshi, and a score 
more races, all armed and prone to murder and brigand- 
age. The whole coast from Gagri to beyond Batum is 
necessarily sympathetic to the enemy. And in the 
interior of the Caucasus and in Transcaucasia there 
are bound to be risings. Russia will either have to 
allow her territory to fall under terrible ravage, or send 
a great quantity of troops to guard the various vital 
points of the shore. Tuapse, for instance, the oil port 
of Maikop, is now an important point, since the railway 
runs thither from Arma\dr through somewhat dis- 
affected country. At Batum, Theodosia, Novorossisk, 
Sebastopol, and Odessa, distinct railway hues from 
Russia terminate; these are most important. There 
is as yet no coast railway. 

But we wait for the success of the Russian Black Sea 
Fleet. The best vessels are the Johann Zlato-Ust and 
the Efstafiy, both built in 1906, and having a displace- 
ment of 13,000 tons. Then follows the Pantalemony 
built 1900, and the Rostislaf^hvolt 1896, and after these 
a tail of old and little vessels. Against this force sails 
the even more miserable Turkish Fleet, whose best 
vessels are the Barharossa Haireden and the Forgitd 
Reis, both built in Germany in 1891, and displacing 
10,060 tons. But Turkey has also the German light 
cruiser Breslau and the great, powerful modern Dread- 
nought Goeben, of 23,000 tonnage and 28 knots speed. 



174 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

If the modern warship is as superior in power as experts 
hold, then the Goehen should itself be able to sink the 
whole Russian Black Sea Fleet. The calamities of 
that vessel, however, lead one to hope that it has 
considerable defects or is inefficiently manned. Twice 
it has been forced back to Constantinople for repairs. 
It is now at large, and it recently shelled Batum. But 
it is steaming at a greatly reduced speed, owing to 
bad Turkish coal. It seems very possible that the bad 
luck that has attended its adventures in the Black Sea 
will continue, and that once more it will be disabled, 
and this time finally. 

Many have asked, Why did not Russia declare war 
on Turkey and fall upon her in the midst of her prep- 
arations? But Russia, having her hands full with 
Austria and Germany, would rather not solve the prob- 
lem of Turkey at present, much as she would like a 
crusade against the Saracen under ordinary conditions. 
The presence of two modern German warships in the 
Turkish fleet greatly increases the difficulty. Russia, 
thanks to her treaty obligations with Turkey, has 
never been able to bring any warships through the 
Dardanelles and the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, 
otherwise she would not be to-day in the position of a 
third-rate naval Power there. Probably the Goehen is 
the first great modern warship that has yet dipped into 
the waters of the Euxine. Turkey has not even per- 
mitted guns to be taken through the Straits, and every 



TURKS 175 

vessel passing from Russia to the ^Egean or back 
again has had to submit to being searched at the north- 
ern or southern entrances to the narrow waters. As 
long as the Goehen and the Breslau are on the sea, the 
Russians are obliged to keep great numbers of soldiers 
waiting at the points of possible invasion. It is worth 
Germany's while to keep Turkey fighting. Turkey's 
quarrel is worth 200,000 Russians less on the fields of 
Poland. 

One of the surprises of the war has been that Turkey 
has been ready to squander our friendship. The Turks, 
as a people, have a great deal of respect and admiration 
for the British people. They regard us as their tradi- 
tional friends. They are proud of the bits of English 
they know, and the sailors and dock labourers of 
Constantinople and Smyrna have even adopted some 
EngHsh into their speech, and you may frequently hear 
such expressions as "All right'' and " Go-ahead" if you 
listen in the harbours. And the English have an 
esteem for the Turks. Many of our dear Pagan fellow- 
countrymen down in the City have a soft spot in their 
hearts for the Turk. This was abundantly apparent at 
the time of the first Balkan War, when London was at 
the outset almost entirely in sympathy with Turkey. 
Of course, the Turks are very picturesque, rather simple 
in their national ways, and they observe the rites of 
their religion in good taste. They have the manners of 
gentlemen — some of them. But then there is every- 



176 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

thing in the Turkish Empire — Caucasian brigands, 
Asiatic Bazouks, Dervishes, Arabs. One rather won- 
ders how Pierre Loti, with his great sentimental attach- 
ment to Turkey, views the present conflict. How will 
he view the spHt up of the Empire and the Christianis- 
ing of so many parts of it? 

If Russia beats Turkey thoroughly there should be 
little trouble in pacifying the Holy Land ; if she takes 
Constantinople the Turkish Empire will be likely to fall 
to bits. That will be some consolation for the extra 
trouble to which the Allies have been put. Russia will 
hold a protectorate over Armenia, Constantinople and 
the access to the Mediterranean. Syria and Palestine 
may receive some measure of independence. 

The Turkish hold on Syria is very light. Only 
about one-fifth of the population is Mohammedan ; the 
remaining four-fifths is quite out of sympathy with 
Turkish rule, and would much rather govern itself or 
entrust its destinies to the French or English. 

What will become of Palestine is rather an interesting 
problem. We hear little of home Syrian politics, and 
yet there is a strong national sentiment among Syrians 
the world over. If Syria were re-established as a 
State, a great number of rich Syrians would return to 
their native land — especially from America. The 
Syrians are mostly Christians, though they are Eastern 
in habits and keep their wives and domestic life much 
veiled, 



TURKS 177 

Stronger claimants to rights in Palestine are the Jews. 
Ancient prophecy, the approval of the Gentile world 
and contemporary Jewish sentiment are all in favour 
of the re-establishment of the Jews in Syria. Zionism 
promises to settle the problem of the treatment of the 
Jews in the various countries of the world. If the 
peace that follows this war is founded on the principle 
that each nationality is entitled to govern itself on its 
own representative land, then it will be a case of Poland 
to the Poles, Alsace to the French, Ireland to the 
Irish, Jerusalem to the Jews, and so on. 

There are, however, great difficulties. Jerusalem is 
a great Christian See. The Roman Catholics, the 
Orthodox Greeks and the Orthodox Russians, the 
Armenians, the Copts, all regard Jerusalem not as a 
place made holy by the Old, but by the New Testa- 
ment, not by Jewish history, but by the holiest events 
in the founding of Christianity. Strange to say, there 
is not half the ill-feeling against the Turks as against 
the Jews. The old wall where the Jews beat their 
heads on the stones and wail is not the holiest shrine 
in Jerusalem, but rather the sepulchre of Jesus; not 
the promise that there the Jews shall be gathered to- 
gether again, but the symbolic fact of the life of the 
first great Pilgrim. Russian peasants, for instance, 
would be very averse from the idea of Bethlehem and 
Calvary belonging to the Jews. 

Still, I suppose whatever happens, the pilgrimaging 



178 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

to Jerusalem will be resumed by the Russian peasants 
when the war is over and the Straits are open again. 
Whatever happens, the same sweet pastoral life of Syrian 
shepherdesses and Bedouin Arabs with their tents will 
still go on. The Syrians are, of course, Turkish con- 
scripts, but so many of them have deserted that the 
nation is more like a nation of non-combatants. The 
Russians have been arrested. Many monks and priests 
have been molested. There has been a considerable 
amount of pillaging of Christian shrines. The Greeks 
have to manage everything, but they are looked upon 
with hostility. There are continual alarms of massacre 
and outrage and many insurrectionary Arab gatherings. 
The Christian solemnisation of the baptism at Jordan 
and of Easter at Jerusalem will be without the chorus 
of pilgrim praise and the curious gaze of the tourist. 
The first Easter after the war should be a wonderful 
time. 



VI 

Americans 

Feeling in America is now more pro-British than it 
was at the beginning of the war. But the fact that it 
was confessedly anti-British at the commencement of 
the war should make the Allies very wary in their 
judgment. Anglo-American sentiment though showy 
is none the less sincere. We can accept it heartily. 
But it is a mistake to ^ our eyes on it to the exclusion 
of other things in America. It is put in the foreground 
by American and British journalists, but from one 
point of view that is a mistake. It is much more im- 
portant that we keep our eyes on the hostility that exists 
in the United States, and that we gauge its power. 
A number of Anglo-Americans are in the habit of think- 
ing and talking and writing slightingly of Britain; 
most of the German and Dutch Americans sympathise 
with the Germans; and the Jews, of whom there are 
1,000,000 in New York alone, are, on the whole, pro- 
German, and are certainly anti-Russian ; the Irish are 
many of them anti-British also. We are too much in 
the habit of assuming that America is peopled by 
British people who merely Hve under a President of 

179 



i8o RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

their own instead of under our King. We forget the 
flow of foreign immigration into the States, we forget 
the trusts, the undue influence of money, the corruption 
in the administration. American reality is not our 
reality. American ideals are not our ideals. I hope 
America will not be called upon to interfere in the 
struggle, either as a belhgerent or as a peace-maker. 
But in case it should happen that America comes in, 
it would be well for the British to keep a true picture of 
America and American ideals before them. 

First of all, America is a commercial country. Busi- 
ness is her chief function. She has no landed gentry, 
no old peasant life with peasant customs. 

America believes in universal peace. She sees no 
reason for such an unprofitable thing as war. She, for 
her part, desires to keep out of warfare. She has to 
that end made many arbitration treaties with other 
nations, and she thinks that she has at least removed 
the danger of being attacked. All the same, up to the 
outbreak of this great European War she lived in a cer- 
tain amount of dread of a war with Germany, and 
many of her citizens, as, for instance, the late Price 
Collier, held that, with time, such a war was even 
probable. America as a pure democracy would vote 
against war every time. The power of government is 
not, however, in the hands of the democracy. Finan- 
ciers have the power to sway the councils of the 
Government to their private ends, and so little wars are 



AMERICANS i8i 

still possible. A war against Mexico, or against Spain, 
or some other third-rate power is always a possibiHty, 
and though it is against the American ideal it would be 
tolerated, inasmuch as America stands to lose little by 
such a course. But a war with Japan, though possible 
and even probable from some points of view, would 
cause a great outcry in the States. For the Americans 
believe in universal peace. 

America believes in health and success and prosperity. 
^^ America has no use for a sick man '^ — to quote a com- 
mon saying. She has little sympathy with failure. 
What is beauty in the life of the old world means noth- 
ing to her. She admires ruins and curiosities and curios, 
but in the spirit of the collector. She has a contempt, 
born of ignorance, for ranks, for ceremonies, rituals, 
liturgies. For her, Russian, German, Norwegian, 
EngKshman, Frenchman, are, except for a difference in 
language which can be overcome, one and the same. 
They are, roughly speaking, of the same capabilities. 
If she recognises differences in national individuahty 
or personal individuality, she does not love the differ- 
ences, does not prize the differences. Her own notions 
of success and goodness she considers to be the real 
notions, her own justice and fairness to be the true 
criterion of justice and fairness. The characteristics 
of her own destiny must, she thinks, show the charac- 
teristics of the destiny of other countries. If other 
countries are not like her they are simply backward. 



i82 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Though there is a great deal of Liberal sentiment in 
America, the Americans are not Liberal. In "Chang- 
ing Russia" I defined Liberalism as "Nationalism as 
opposed to ImperiaUsm; respect for the rights of in- 
dividuals as opposed to Collectivism ; a belief in little 
nations rather than in large empires. Liberalism 
encourages national characteristics, distinctive lan- 
guage, dress, custom, the barriers which keep people 
apart.'' America, by the very fact of its conglomera- 
tive formation, is opposed to these national character- 
istics, has a contempt for these characteristics. She 
cannot, therefore, bring much light to the settlement of 
the European struggle on the desired Liberal and na- 
tional lines of recognition of the rights of small peoples 
not to be Prussianised or Russianised or Anghfied. 
America's quite natural desire is to Americanise every- 
one who comes to her. 



Ill 

INDIVIDUALS 



in. INDIVIDUALS 

I 

The Great White Tsar 

The cannon speak louder than the voices of men in 
this war. Never were men so thrown into insignifi- 
cance ; never was there such a disparity between men 
and guns. B attles are won by guns rather than by men. 
It often seems as if the issimus tacked on to the word 
general were a diminutive, not a superlative, and that 
Generalissimus Joffre must be some sort of wonderful 
little ivory model or toy and not a man. We have only 
to read one of our fine old war-dramas, such as Richard 
III., to realise how much more did personal character 
and nobility count in the old days than now. When 
the history of this vast war is written, it will be almost 
impossible to take the personal history of some individ- 
ual man and say, "There, in one man's Hfe and passion 
lies the whole story of this European strife." The 
only figure that does stand out at present is that of 
the Kaiser, and possibly a Shakespeare of our age 
would find in the Kaiser's story the epic of the war. 
Unfortunately, we dishke the Kaiser too much to con- 

185 



i86 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

sider him calmly as Milton did Satan, or Shakespeare 
Richard III. It will be years before we can regard 
the Kaiser with clear eyes. But, meanwhile, there 
is one other figure in this war that stands out on the 
popular vision very remarkably, and that is the Tsar 
Nicholas 11. , once called the Great White Tsar. 

When the Tsar came to the throne he showed himself 
to be an idealist, even a Utopian idealist, by his pas- 
sionate efforts for the estabhshment of universal peace. 
The cause of peace was chiefly associated with the 
name of the Tsar. It was strange that this great 
absolute monarch should associate himself with the 
cause dearest of all to democrats and Liberals, strange 
that he should be the colleague of men like W. T. Stead 
and Andrew Carnegie. Many said that the Tsar was 
not sincere. The sarcastic and cynical found Nicholas 
delivered wholly to their untender mercy when at last 
owing to non-acceptance of Japanese demands war 
broke out between Russia and Japan. But a worse 
denial of ideals was to follow when the great revo- 
lutionary outburst was put down ruthlessly by military 
force. The Tsar became ^'the man of blood.'' People 
associated the ghastly carnage of the war with the 
dreadful loss of life at the Coronation crush in Moscow, 
and with the firing on the workmen of Father Gapon's 
procession, and with many another incident in which 
the Tsar's name was connected with the injury and 
death of his subjects. Perhaps no one has been more 



THE GREAT WHITE TSAR 187 

hated in his time than the Tsar. No one has been 
more cursed. 

And yet despite all that seemed against him, many 
people quietly kept their faith in him. The m.ost 
touching example is perhaps that of W. T. Stead. 
Stead and many others saw in the Tsar the granter of 
the Duma, a new Peter the Great, a God-chosen 
monarch leading his nation through the most difficult 
and hazardous ways of national evolution. They held 
that it was comparatively easy for Alexander II. to give 
liberty to the serfs, but that it needed a stupendous 
genius to cope with the difficulties that that liberation 
would lead to. It must always be remembered that 
no Russian monarch previous to Nicholas II. has had 
to face 100,000,000 free peasants and working men. 
It must always have been said of him, even if he had 
been stricken in the revolution, that he was confronted 
by problems that only genius or sacred simplicity 
could solve. 

He survived his passion for peace, his unfortunate 
war with Japan, his wild and bloody revolutionary era 
— to be laughed at. Attention was drawn to the fact 
that tens of thousands of soldiers lined the railway 
track whenever he made a journey to a city in his 
dominion, and that he dare not stir from his palace 
without an army to guard him, that before he went to 
the third city of the Empire he had several thousand 
people arrested as suspicious characters, that in many 



i88 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

parts of Russia he dare not show himself even with 
these precautions. The precautions did cause one 
to pause and reflect, and yet we remember how at 
Kieff the Jewish poKce agent Bogroff managed to get 
into the theatre in spite of all care, and only at the 
last moment changed his mind and shot Stolypin 
instead of His Majesty. The precautions seemed 
necessary. 

The revolutionaries said the Tsar was safe, he did 
not count, he was stupid, and his survival helped their 
cause more than could his death. They meant this in a 
sinister way. They meant : the Tsar by his wickedness 
and folly shows more clearly than we could show by 
propaganda that the day of Tsars is over and that it is 
better for mankind to dispense with Tsars altogether. 
The revolutionaries were wholly mistaken. 

The Tsar's life and personal character are a mystery. 
He is beyond definite comment in his own country. 
Unless he shows himself, no one can say what he is. It 
remains till now to make a fair estimate of his ideals 
and his passion. The Tsar to-day has outlived the ac- 
cusation of insincerity, has outlived all his unpopularity, 
and has given the lie to all that has been said against 
him. He has no doubt gone through great spiritual 
evolution in these parlous and suffering times. His 
mind has been working all the time, and to-day he 
emerges as a great serious monarch whose entire 
thought and continuous anxiety have been, "What 



THE GREAT WHITE TSAR 189 

must be done to save my people from their dangers, 
and to put them on the high road of a great destiny ? " 

The personal work of the Tsar shows itself in the 
courageous attack which he made on the great corrupt 
police system which had sold itself in part to the 
revolutionary party. The police system in Russia is 
in some respects more powerful than the Tsardom it- 
self, and it can almost always procure the assassination 
of its persecutors. The Tsar very seriously endangered 
his life by his efforts. Next was the more peaceful 
but less easy problem of giving more land to the 
peasants and settling them on small holdings. Next 
was the extraordinary manifesto against drunkenness 
made in the spring of this year, when the Imperial 
sanction was given to a campaign for local veto and 
several hundred thousand vodka shops were closed. 
In passing, let us remember the amnesty given to revo- 
lutionary exiles, permitting Gorky, among others, to 
return to Russia unharmed. Then there was the Tsar 
and the war, the noble proclamations and brother's 
hand extended towards Poland, the religious pilgrimage 
to the famous Russian shrines to pray for Russia, and 
the complete abolition by Imperial Ukase of the sale of 
vodka, first for a month, then for the space of the dura- 
tion of the war, and now — by promise — for ever. 

So on the day of the commencement of hostilities by 
Turkey, the great street-mobs of Moscow and Petro- 
grad carry the Tsar's portrait through the capitals, 



iQo RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

singing '^God save the Tsar'' and cheering and shout- 
ing with indescribable enthusiasm. To-day, the Tsar 
goes about his kingdom unguarded and without pre- 
cautions. He goes without hesitation to the front, to 
the inspiriting of his soldiers at Ossovetz. He visits 
Roman Catholic and Polish Vilna and salutes there 
the emblems of Catholicism and Polish nationalism. 

When some years ago I wrote in the middle of ^^Un- 
discovered Russia" — ^^God save the Tsar!" it was 
taken as a paradox and even quoted against the book by 
one formidable Radical journal. To-day, ^^God save 
the Tsar!" is a clamorous sentiment of the Russian 
streets. 

Before the Tsar passed the uniform for the common 
soldier in the war he asked that a complete suit be 
sent to him, and with it boots and rifle and full kit. 
And he himseK took off his royal clothes and put on 
the soldier's uniform and shouldered the kit and the 
gun and walked in them on his estate in Livadia some 
two hours. He was photographed so, and has allowed 
the photograph to be reproduced for common sale and 
for distribution among the soldiers. 

He is a simple man. He inherits the awful power 
of his ancestors but he would like to spend a day as a 
common soldier in the trenches. Such an action would 
resound throughout history and win the hearts of 
the whole non-German world. But necessarily the 
Tsar is to the peasants someone unearthly, a giant, a 



THE GREAT WHITE TSAR 191 

demi-god. They would not really be well influenced 
by such an action, probably would not understand it. 
Still, who knows? Noble deeds take care of them- 
selves. 

At the war goes on, the sincerity and the nobility 
of the Tsar will be a great factor in the giving of vic- 
tory. The sacred simpUcity, kindness, and earnestness 
of the Tsar emerge as a guarantee of the ultimate issue 
of this struggle, but also of the marvellous and healthful 
future of the vast Russian Empire and of the wonderful 
Russian people. It is good to see in the idealist, the 
Peace Tsar, the same personahty of to-day, but made 
wiser, stronger, simpler by suffering and responsibihty 
— the Great White Tsar. 



II 

M. Sazonof 

Though I have never been in the capital before, I 
have friends there, thanks to my books, which stand 
for me to those who have not met me. It is very 
pleasant to meet people who have an intimate know- 
ledge of you even before they have seen your face. At 
Petrograd I had such a pleasant meeting with Madame 
Sazonof and her husband the Foreign Minister, with one 
of the ladies-in-waiting on the Empress, and with 
Madame Novikof, so full of years and yet so energetic, 
M.P. for Russia, as Disraeli called her. Madame 
Novikof I had met in London; the others I met for 
the first time. 

We may call this, as in reality it is, an interview with 
M. Sazonof. I was very glad to see the Russian 
Minister for Foreign Affairs face to face, and to come 
into personal contact with a man whose voice counts 
for so much in the councils of Russia and of the Allies. 
A hard man, yet kindly, brisk, alert, European. You 
would not say you were in the presence of a Russian 
except for the conversational vivacity of the Minister, 
and a certain Slavonic impulsiveness which lurks only 

192 



M. SAZONOF 193 

half suppressed, half masked in the eyes of this strong 
and determined man. He has an English manner, an 
English way of living, and evidently has a strong 
personal liking for English things and English ways. 
He has hved eight years in England in his time, and 
so knows us pretty well. He, as much as anyone on 
either side, realises the value of mutual friendship, not 
only now when we can co-operate with soldiers and 
cannon and sailors and ships, but afterwards, for the 
working out together of the problems of peace. 

I had a pleasant hour's talk at the Minister's house in 
the Downing Street of Petrograd, a fine old crimson 
walled mansion on the Dvortsovy Proyezd. 

You enter from a door parallel to that which leads to 
the department. A lackey meets you; you are put 
into a tiny lift and slowly raised to a parquet-floored 
gallery leading to a bright reception room warmed and 
illumined by an open log fire. Madame Sazonof came 
forward to meet me, and with her an interesting dog, a 
crafty Siberian laika^ that walked behind me and caught 
my instep in his mouth each time I lifted my right foot. 

^'He is finding out about you," said Madame Sazonof 
with a smile. ^^He always makes sure of everyone who 
comes here. He almost frightened the Austrian Am- 
bassador away altogether, and in the days before the 
war the Ambassador used to send up to have the dog 
taken away before he would make his appearance." 

"He knew who was the enemy," said I. 



194 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

"Yes, you see, now, he quite takes to you." 

I barked at him. We were soon on very friendly 
terms and he sat on his tail all through luncheon and 
looked up into my eyes, and I was advised to give him 
little bits, which I did. 

M. Sazonof came in and we spoke together in Russian. 
But when we went in to luncheon, an English luncheon 
by the way, we all spoke English. The Russians spoke 
so well and so charmingly that you might imagine 
you were listening to a party of EngHsh talking in a 
similar circle in London. 

The Minister made light of the danger of being at- 
tacked in London by our Russophobes. What he 
feared in going to England was the Channel crossing, 
no more. He thought I might have a bad time going 
home, might get captured by the Germans, and he 
thought I had better stay in Russia. I said I thought 
of going by Archangel, but he assured me it was closed 
by ice. 

We talked of the Tsar. "I wonder if people in Eng- 
land realise what a great thing the vodka prohibition 
is?'' said Sazonof. "We are sober from end to end. 
We look for extraordinary results when once the war is 
over and we have time to develop in peace.'' 

"It is making the Tsar very popular," said I. "Even 
in our country many of those who have felt themselves 
out of sympathy with Russia begin to point to the Tsar 
as to an ideal monarch." 



M. SAZONOF 195 

'* Isn't the Tsar splendid ? '^ said a young Baroness who 
was present ; and she told a story of the Tsar visiting 
a hospital in Poland, and talking with the soldiers. 

^^He entered the hospital accompanied by many 
officials and court dignitaries, and passed with them in 
one of the great general rooms, where lay several hun- 
dred wounded men. The chief surgeon was about to 
show him round, when the Tsar, evidently in great 
emotion, turned to him and the rest of the decorated 
officials around him and said: ^ Leave me here alone.' 
They bowed and scraped, but did not, however, go 
out. ^ Leave me here alone with the soldiers,' said the 
Tsar again; 'I wish to speak to them myself.' When 
he had said these words the surgeon and the rest slowly, 
and as it were unwillingly, went out, and the Tsar 
was left alone with his poor wounded soldiers; and 
he talked with them for a whole hour. So he got rid of 
that terrible old background of official Russia, and was 
himself. Don't you think it a beautiful picture of 
the Tsar alone with his people ? " 

^'The Tsar has a beautiful character," said Madame 
Sazonof. '^Everyone who comes into touch with him 
personally, feels his tenderness toward his fellow men, 
his delicate consideration for all people with whom he 
has to deal." 

After lunch we adjourned to a beautiful old room, 
warmed and lit by a log fire burning on a large hearth. 
Here we had coffee, and I chatted with the Minister by 



196 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

the fire ; whilst the ladies sat round a table beside one of 
the great windows and talked. Among other things 
that Sazonof said were the following : — 

*'I hope you are making up your minds to have a 
larger army, not only now, but after the war is over. 
Your fleet is splendid. It is surpassing all expecta- 
tions, but your army was far too weak when the war 
broke out, and is too weak for your Imperial needs. 

^^I think that, as the years go on, there will be even 
greater scope for Russian and British friendship 
than before. We have yet to know one another better, 
of course. There is really no room for jealousy be- 
tween the two Empires. 

"What is the feeling in your country about the 
settlement? How do they look now at Constantino- 
ple? We should much prize the opinion, not only of 
the British Government, but of the British people ; for 
we realise that, when peace is made, it will be a peace 
between peoples as much, and even more, than between 
Governments.'' 

I asked about the autonomy of Poland, and the posi- 
tion of the Jews there. I suggested that something be 
done to help out the Jews who wish to go to America. 

"They are not likely to go in great numbers," said he. 
"They don't want to go. They had much rather settle 
in Russia or in Siberia." 

"Is anything likely to be done to relieve the tension 
of the Jewish problem?" 



M. SAZONOF 197 

M. Sazonof thought it possible that they might be 
excused mihtary service in future if they wished it. He 
recognised the great difficulty of dealing with the 
Jewish problem, but spoke enthusiastically of the 
coming restoration of Poland. Russia ought to have 
made up the quarrel with the suffering Poles long ago. 

Finally, we spoke of the prospect of Russo-British 
friendship, and of the mutual co-operation of the two 
great powers in Asia. He thought that with the war 
the old Asiatic rivalry would completely disappear. 
Russian civilisation was a help to British civilisation. 
The Christian churches on the North of the Himalayas 
were brother churches of the English on the other side. 

A rather amusing thing happened to me the day after 
I had seen Sazonof. A secret agent took me apart and 
said: 

'^You saw Sazonof yesterday, what did you think 
of him, is he a strong man? " 

"Yes, a strong man I should say, with plenty of com- 
mon sense. Of course, he knows where to look to take 
his cue." 

The agent lowered his voice and said in a hushed 
whisper : 

"Where would you say he looked, to Baron ?" 

and he mentioned a certain influential German Russian 
supposed to be carrying on an intrigue in favour of peace. 

" Why, no," said I, "to the Tsar I meant, of course." 

And I felt like a person speaking in some novel of 
diplomatic life. 



i 



IV 

POLICIES 



IV. POLICIES 
I 

The Vodka Prohibition 

The Russian nation spent £9,000,000 more on vodka 
in the year 1913-14 than in 191 2-13. It spent £50,000- 
000 more than it did ten years ago. The population 
increased by some thirty per cent in ten years, but the 
sale of vodka fifty per cent. According to the estimate 
of Count Witte, made in February, 1914, in the Gosu- 
darstvenny Sovet, or Council of State, the nation would 
have spent during the current financial year no less 
than £100,000,000 on strong drink. 

These figures, growing steadily more alarming year 
by year, at last necessitated a broad national con- 
sideration of the whole subject of temperance. For 
some months in 191 4 Russia talked of nothing but the 
struggle against drunkenness. 

Count Witte, who was responsible for the acquire- 
ment by the Russian Government of the monopoly — 
i.e. of the whole business of selling vodka, an excellent 
measure, both financially and morally, came forward 
to defend his good name and to point out to the Govern- 
ment that the time was ripe for their turning the liquor 
control to the moral benefit of the nation. A great 



202 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

many people are ready to ascribe to Count Witte 
the blame of the increasing Russian insobriety — even 
Socialists, to whom one would think the idea of State 
control would be especially pleasing, are ready to cast 
that aspersion. But, obviously, Russia had every- 
thing to gain by this simplification of the whole vast 
trade of selling spirits. At the Tsar's word, in this 
place or in that, in this province or that district, the 
sale of vodka could be forbidden. 

^'If I had now the power of approach to His Majesty 
as a member of the Government," said Count Witte, 
*^I would advise His Majesty, without waiting for the 
decision of the Duma or of the Council of State, to 
publish a ukase to the effect that His Majesty now 
finds it indispensable to lay the foundation of Russian 
temperance by limiting the gross sale of vodka to £900,- 
000,000.'' 

The balance of superfluous revenue, strange to say. 
Count Witte would have given to temperance societies 
— £10,000,000 to Bands of Hope. No Government 
outside a novel would part with such an immense sum 
of money to amateur societies, though, of course, the 
Young Men's Christian Association would do a great 
deal for sobriety with £10,000,000. 

A great number of people went much further than 
Count Witte, and said: "Forbid the sale altogether, 
forbid it in certain districts, forbid it in certain provinces 
for a start, or allow local option." But the late Pre- 



THE VODKA PROHIBITION 203 

mier, M. Kokovtsoff, generally negatived these pro- 
posals by his fear of the outbreak of general illicit 
trading in spirits, and his disinclination to deprive 
those who already drink temperately. He did not 
look for, nor indeed expect, the complete abstinence 
of the Russian nation — did anyone ? 

Russia, however, was in a position of real difficulty. 
Her industrial villages, and those barracks of workmen 
and workwomen that have sprung up around great 
country factories were in such a state on Sundays and 
festivals that it was extremely unpleasant, and some- 
times dangerous, for a well-dressed person to pass 
through them. They were infested with mobs of 
hooligans ; up and down the main street a dozen men 
and as many women might be found yelling, singing, 
screeching hke demented creatures. In almost every 
house someone would be drunk; yet in the remoter 
agricultural villages you would seldom come across 
anything of the kind. It was the accompaniment of 
better wages, lack of pleasure in factory life, lack of 
the education which a peasant can do without but 
which a factory worker must have. But it was 
something more than mere weakness, it was a menace 
to respectable society. No paper could ever dream of 
recording a tenth of the assaults, murders, robberies, 
and obscenities that occurred in the industrial cities 
and villages and factory-barracks of Russia. They 
were unchronicled. 



204 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

The Russian Government before the Tsar stepped in 
had only an old remedy — to imprison offenders. 
Many people thought that though imprisonment was 
a wrong method it was indeed efficacious. But the 
astonishing truth was dawning on the Russian people 
that if Russia had ten times as many prisoners it could 
not accommodate its wrongdoers. The police all over 
the country knew that it was no use arresting drunkards 
and assaulters. If they arrested them there was no 
place to put them; they could only be reprimanded 
and released. In Vladikavkaz not so long ago there was 
a drunken fray in the main street, stabbing, firing of 
revolvers ; some twenty or thirty people were arrested, 
but there was nothing to be done with them; they 
were all released. 

*' Siberia is vast,'' said some. But already Siberia 
claims to be a young Hving State, and notifies Russia 
that she must no longer be treated as a penal settlement. 

A great deal of money has been voted each year 
for the encouragement of sobriety ; and in the spring 
one of the Moscow papers made a special inquiry in 
every province of what was being done with the money, 
and printed a most interesting report. 

At Nizhni Novgorod Fair the authorities had estab- 
hshed a temperance museum, two reading rooms, two 
tea-houses, an open-air theatre, and a home for drunk- 
ards. Almost every province had estabHshed a whole 
series of village reading-rooms, generally in the post 



THE VODKA PROHIBITION 205 

office and spread on long tables many anti-alcohol 
sheets and church papers. The literature was deeply 
uninteresting, and I may say that I have visited many 
such free libraries and have rarely found anyone reading 
there. In many places, however, cinematograph shows 
were arranged, and to them the population flocked, 
amateur theatricals were planned, farces and operettas 
were performed, the Tango was danced, and the latest 
comic song was brought down. In some rare cases 
evening classes were arranged. In the Jewish Pale 
free legal help was given. 

All but one of the reports sent in indicated that 
despite large amounts of money voted for temperance 
aid drunkenness was strongly on the increase ; and for 
that reason there was some doubt as to the advisability 
of giving another 10,000,000 roubles to the cause. 

There were real natural forces fighting against 
drunkenness, and winning — the lighting up of personal 
ambition, the cinematograph, the Evangelical move- 
ment. The Church of Russia, though it did not exclude 
the drunkard or evildoer, stood steadily for sobriety. 
It did not say it was a sin to drink, and, indeed, its 
own priests drank lustily — even to excess upon occa- 
sion — but it stood utterly against brutal drunkenness. 
It may seem strange to Enghsh people to differentiate ; 
but there is a difference between the drunkenness which 
comes from melancholy or from true sociability and the 
drunkenness which is just beastliness, the drunkenness 



2o6 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

with which are associated coarseness, lying, fighting, 
and stealing — the difference between being ''drunk as 
a lord ' ' and ' ' drunk as a Kaffir. ' ' It is against the latter 
that Russia has had to fight. It can never, without 
racial change, get rid of its melancholy and its social 
spirit. 

Kharkov, they say, abounds in temperance brother- 
hoods. Theosophy is on the increase, also vegetarian- 
ism, and evangelism. All these make for sobriety. It 
is somewhat saddening to see the rents in the Church 
since religious freedom was granted in Russia. But 
there is true consolation in the fact that the flocking 
converts are earnest men and women who feel they want 
to lead a new life. They take our Western forms 
and ethics ; they despise the drunkard, they are puri- 
tanical in judgment, but they are a hardening and 
strengthening power in the nation. 

A most extraordinary phenomenon, the Russian 
nation's sudden passion for sobriety ! It seemed 
something passing, something merely of the moment 
when it first gave notice of itself in Press articles and 
pubHc speeches. But when the Tsar gave his famous 
rescript to M. Bark asking him to limit the sale of 
vodka, and when what was practically a national 
measure of local veto was adopted, the whole of Russia 
from Tsar to peasant woman was swept with a tem- 
perance ardour. 

Long before the war thousands of spirit shops had 



THE VODKA PROHIBITION 207 

been sealed owing to popular demand. The drunkards 
themselves petitioned to have the vodka supply cut off. 
For those with an eye to the future of Russia this was 
an astonishingly significant spectacle. 

Still Russia was a long way off from national sobriety. 
We looked for something else to combat desire for drink. 
Russia would have to survey her industrial regions 
and drain her human marshes systematically. The 
gold-mining villages, for instance, still remained what 
they were. It seemed evident that something more 
drastic would have to be done. 

The drastic thing arrived. The war broke out and 
at once, by Imperial Ukase, every vodka shop in the 
kingdom was closed, the sale of vodka in restaurants 
and in railway buffets was prohibited, and at a stroke 
of the pen vodka was unobtainable. Contrary to 
expectation, there was not even any illicit trading in 
spirits — at least none to speak of. Russia was made 
sober not by act of Parliament, but by something more 
powerful than that, more ready, more simple — by 
word of Tsar. 

In the early days of the hostilities it was a common- 
place to thank God for the German declaration of war ; 
it had closed as if by magic every spirit shop in Russia 
and Siberia. It had liberated town and countryside 
from the dreariness of drink. 

Great days for the Tresveniki, a Russian sect that 
preaches nothing but temperance — it was founded by 



2o8 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

a simple Moscow man who gathered an enormous 
number of adherents, Orthodox as well as Russian 
Non-conformists. They drew up the great petition, 
which, after ten weeks of the war and of enforced 
sobriety, was presented to the Tsar, a petition for the 
prohibition of vodka for ever. 

It seemed preposterous to ask the Tsar for complete 
prohibition in the face of Russia's tremendous war 
debts. The Tsar had promised that no more vodka 
should be sold until the end of the war; and that 
promise had been greeted with great satisfaction. It 
had been taken as a maximum. The hope was that, 
even after the war, vodka would never be sold in the 
old easy way, at a moderate price in small bottles, to 
whoever asked for it. 

But the impossible happened. The Tsar not only 
received the petitioners, but answered them in the 
following significant sentence : 

"I had already decided on total prohibition before I 
read your petition." 

So Russia was rejoiced by the Tsar, by one of the 
most amazing personal acts in the modern history of 
civilisation. 

And it is a fact the vodka shop is closed. Many 
people in England seem inclined to doubt the reality of 
this measure; but I can vouch for it, who have seen 
Russia sober. Not only has the sale of vodka been 
stopped, but the sale of beer also. It is impossible to 



THE VODKA PROHIBITION 209 

find a drunken man on a festival, or on an ordinary day, 
anywhere in the Russian Empire, except in the Caucasus 
and parts of Central Asia, where the Government has 
never held the monopoly of the sale of intoxicating 
liquors. It is quiet in the industrial villages, in the 
'^factories,'' and in the mining settlements. The old 
songs are sung; there is the old sociability, but it is 
over tea and around the samovar. In every province 
of Russia there has been an astonishing decrease in 
crime, in the breaking of heads, in immorality. The 
papers in the great cities continually have to spare 
columns in their war-filled issues, in order to give the 
facts of sobriety, and comment on them. Russia is 
greatly pleased with herself as a non-drinking nation. 

The great question is : Will complete prohibition be 
feasible after the war is over? Will not the warriors 
returning from victory demand drinks to toast the 
Tsar and the Allies and their generals ? Will there be 
vodka riots, or will the men who return be ready 
to sacrifice their old habits for the national ideal? 
I am inchned to think that it will be the latter. The 
soldiers will almost unanimously approve the prohibi- 
tion. I talked to several soldiers about it. One, who 
was attached to the aviation service, attached to an 
officer as servant, gives me an example of what the 
peasants are thinking. He had bought a loaf and two 
herrings, and, eating them with great gusto, exclaimed : 
'^Ah for some vodka now." 



2IO RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

"You'd like some, eh?'' 

"Lots of us are like madmen because we can't get 
it." 

"Tell me, what do you think of shutting the spirit 
shop up? Would you like to have it open again?" 

"No, I wouldn't." 

"Why?" 

"Why! Because the spirit shop is our enemy. If 
you have a quarter in your pocket and the door of the 
shop is open, in you go. You don't want to go, but if 
the door's open you can't help yourself. If you know 
the door's open in a village five miles away — you go 
there and buy the vodka. And what's the good of it 
after all ? No, brother, we've learned something in this 
war. I, for instance, have been flying in the air. None 
of our village have ever flown. Who would have 
dreamed of me going up among the clouds and the stars 
like a Frenchman or an Englishman? There you see 
what noble allies we have. They don't drink, why 
should we?" 

"Didn't you feel frightened going up so high?" 

"Yes, first time it was rather dreadful, but that was 
only for a few minutes. It's nothing to go up now." 

"Did you fly over the enemy?" 

"Yes, one day at Novo-Georgievsk we set out to 
learn what way the Germans were moving towards 
Warsaw, and we flew over them. Lord! how little 
those Germans looked, but they all began to fire at 



THE VODKA PROHIBITION 211 

us, with rifles and field guns, and cannon, and, as one 
or two bullets went through our sails, we went higher, 
and turned away and came back home/' 

^'Didn't you feel afraid?" 

"Not a little bit." 

"What are you going to do now?" 

"I am being sent to escort a new aeroplane to the 
front." 

"And you can get on without vodka?" 

"Yes, long as I have my wife with me." 

" What do you mean — your wife ? " 

" Yes, my wife goes everywhere with me now. When 
I lie down at night she is there beside me, and when I 
waken up in the morning there she is still." He pointed 
to his rifle and smiled. 

I might give many talks, and as far as they touched 
on the vodka question there was always the same senti- 
ment — though the soldiers would give anything for a 
drink, yet they are glad that it is impossible to get it. 

Still, it is certain that, if the peasant is deprived of 
his vodka, and that means of drowning his sorrows and 
escaping from his ennui, something must be done to 
make up for the loss. Especially in the industrial 
villages, hohdays without vodka will be dreary beyond 
words. The industrial communities must be given a 
share in the advantages of industriahsm. The people 
must be given personal ambition, art, hterature, music. 
Instead of the Tango, the performance of indecent 



212 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

farces and tinkling operettas, the foreign and thought- 
confusing cinema, must come fundamental education, 
good libraries, good theatres, music. From my know- 
ledge of the Russian peasantry, I know nothing that 
would so effectively combat drunkenness and hooligan- 
ism as the establishment of musical societies and bands 
in every village in the country. The Russians are 
surely the most musical people in the world. At village 
cinema theatres, where before or after the shadow-show 
there has been a trio or quartet with guitars or bala- 
laikas, I have seen drunken peasants stand up in the 
front row and try to make long declamations to the 
musicians, whilst all through the pictures they have 
sat staring into vacancy and wondering dimly where 
they were. Music awakens the best soul of the Rus- 
sian. When he is dead drunk he will raise his ear to a 
song. 

If Russia is going to be truly strong in this matter she 
has got to raise a new generation who not only deny 
vodka, but who would not enter the vodka shop even 
if the door were open. But, whatever happens, tem- 
perate Russia will have a great deal more driving power, 
will be more ambitious, and more able to get what it 
wants in the world than dear melancholy drunken 
Russia. 



II 

Distrust of Russia or Friendship with Russia 

It is very strange, but many of those who in public 
life stand first of all for peace and goodwill have yet an 
inappeasable malice against Russia. When war broke 
out a number of the Pacifists, Mr. Llewellyn Williams 
among them, came forward honourably and said : 
We did not see that Germany was the enemy, did not 
see that at the last we should be bound to fight her, 
and we were wrong. England is proud of men who have 
the courage to come out like Mr. Williams ; such men 
are the strength of England. But what of the re- 
mainder of the Pacifist party — it was thought to be 
dead. It became stone-silent for awhile. Russia was 
feted : Germany was cried against. We went forward 
in our might to shield Belgium and France from the 
common enemy. We seemed to fail somewhat ; Paris 
was in danger. On the other hand, the Russians began 
to go ahead in East Prussia, they took town after town 
and even threatened Berlin. Germany was obliged 
to give the Russian invasion her serious attention. 
It was the general opinion that the Russian onslaught 
saved Paris and made possible for French and English 

213 



214 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

the great victory of the Marne. No one in England 
dare attack Russia, even in a veiled way. 

Then Germany, realising that the three Powers, 
England, France and Russia, were too strong for her, 
sought by cunning to separate them. A rumour was set 
abroad that Russia was about to make a secret peace, 
that the Tsar when he went to Ossovets really went 
to try to arrange a pact with the Germans. During 
the black days of Warsaw it was whispered that Russia 
had sold Warsaw to the Germans. When the Germans 
were driven back to Mlava and Neidenburg and Thorn 
it was rumoured that Germany had agreed to evacuate 
Poland and then discuss terms of secret peace. During 
all the sanguinary struggle in Poland that ensued it 
has been hinted that Russia was only playing at fight- 
ing. Fortunately, the English Censor recognised that 
this was German propaganda designed to bring about 
distrust between England and Russia. Nine-tenths 
of the journalists in Russia, not knowing the Russian 
language or having any intimate reaHsation of Russian 
character, swallowed the interesting stories and wrote 
them to London and to New York. They put them 
in their journalistic correspondence, they put them in 
their letters. Some, of course, got through. And they 
brought to speech and to life the Russophobe and 
Pacifist party whom everyone thought to be dead. 

It was said that Russia did not intend to redeem her 
promise to Poland, that she was getting swelled head 



DISTRUST OF RUSSIA 215 

through her victories, that she was capable of seUing 
the Hberties of Europe. Most insidiously of all, it was 
hinted that, when we had humbled Germany, we 
should have to turn our attention to Russia. It was 
Russia's turn next to be isolated and humbled. 

A reasonable person necessarily asked : Might it not 
possibly turn out to be England's turn to be isolated 
and humbled? When has England shown herself so 
capable a diplomatist, or Russia so poor a diplomatist, 
that it should be possible to isolate Russia ? 

Bernard Shaw, who for fifteen years has had more 
than anyone else the ear of the British public, and has 
been trying to educate the British public, and give to it 
his own point of view, did a great deal to ferment dis- 
trust of Russia by a pamphlet which the Censor might 
justifiably have emended. Had a journal in Russia 
dared to print similar animadversions upon England 
and the Allies, it would have been confiscated, and the 
editor brought into court and fined. According to 
Mr. Shaw : — 

"Russia has been able to set all three Western friends 
and neighbours, Germany, France, and England, 
shedding rivers of blood from one another's throats." 

"The Russian Government is the open enemy of 
every liberty we boast of. 

"Under Russian government, people whose worst 
crime is to find the Daily News a congenial newspaper 
are hanged, flogged, or sent to Siberia as a matter of 



2i6 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

daily routine." This, Mr. Shaw, who pride yourself on 
being normal, is an absurd lie, but a hateful lie, seeing 
that it is intended for the ears of those who are wont not 
to think for themselves. The Russkia Vedimosti and- 
the Retch are journals of a much more irreconcilable t3^e 
than the Daily News ; but who has ever been flogged 
or hanged or even fined for reading them ? 

*' Russia has been welcome to flog and hang her H. G. 
Wells's and Lloyd Georges by the dozen without a 
word of remonstrance from our plutocratic Press." 
Not one of Mr. H. G. Wells's books, all of which are 
translated, has been stopped in Russia. She would 
probably have flogged Mr. Shaw in his youth — it is 
now too late a week. 

"My heart," says G. B. S., "is with the Moscow 
Art Theatre." I had thought it was rather with some 
Vienna or Berhn theatre, where his works are usually 
produced before they are produced in England. As to 
the Art Theatre at Moscow, it produced one play of 
Shaw's long ago as an experiment — Ccesar and Cleo- 
patra. But for the last ten years he has not written a 
play that had any interest to the Moscow Theatre of 
Art. 

"My heart is with the Russia of Tolstoy, and Turge- 
nieff, and Dostoievsky, and Gorky, and Tchekof." 
How Mr. Shaw's intellect has been at variance with 
his heart then! His heart is with Dostoieffsky. Dos- 
toieffsky's heart was a large one — it sheltered Ras- 



DISTRUST OF RUSSIA .217 

kolnikof and Ivan Karamazof and even Smerdyakof. 
It sheltered, however, no Germans. 

'^When we fight the Tsar we are fighting not for 
Tolstoy and Gorky (strange couple), but for the forces 

that Tolstoy thundered against all his life " And 

when the Tsar is fighting for us, Mr. Shaw ? 

^^I know all our disinterested and thoughtful sup- 
porters of the war feel deeply uneasy about the Russian 
aUiance.'' The wish is father to the thought. 

"Until Russia becomes a federation of several sepa- 
rate democratic states, and the Tsar is either promoted 
to the honourable position of hereditary President or 
else totally aboHshed, the Eastern boundary of the 
League of Peace must be the Eastern boundary of 
Swedish, German and Itahan civilisation." In other 
words, a league of peace, i.e. an alliance, must be 
formed between England and Germany and the rest 
after the war, but Russia must be dropped, Russia 
must be isolated, and, if necessary, fought by the 
League of Peace. 

"A victory imattainable without Russian aid would 
be a defeat for Western European Liberalism.'' To 
this I say — let Liberals speak for themselves. Mr. 
Shaw is a Socialist — the very opposite of a Liberal. 
For the rest, I would ask those who agree with Mr. 
Shaw, which would be the greater defeat, this so-called 
moral defeat or the actual defeat which would have 
taken place if the three Emperors had been in aUiance 



2i8 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

— Germany, Russia, and Austria, against England 
and France ? 

^^Our allies of to-day may be our enemies of to- 
morrow.'^ 

Many Russians reading these opinions will think that 
Mr. Shaw may have been bought by the Germans to 
write them. They are wrong. These are Shaw's 
actual thoughts, inspired by his vanity and his hate 
of religion. On the other hand, many Russians will 
think that Shaw's opinion is representative of British 
opinion, and they will conclude that we are not true 
friends of Russia, that we are ready to betray her the 
moment our own security is achieved. The pamphlet 
should have been stopped. Its immediate effect is to 
strengthen the hand of the German party at the 
Russian court and to put us in danger of having to 
fight, not only Germany and Austria which are already 
as much as we can manage, but Russia as well. Such 
a pamphlet as Mr. Shaw's is a blow to Russian freedom, 
Russian hope, in fact to the very forces in Russia with 
whom Mr. Shaw alleges his heart is to be found. 

Everything is to be gained by being generous to 
Russia, by knowing her and loving her, and conse- 
quently trusting her- utterly. What men like Shaw 
and the haters of Russia tried to spread is ignorance 
of Russia. True knowledge of Russia means love 
towards her, tenderness, generosity. The truly reli- 
gious heart of England looks to find strength, spiritual 



DISTRUST OF RUSSIA 219 

food, inspiration, and when it comes to Russia it finds 
it. Socialists of the Shaw type have a great maHce 
against rehgion. All materialists and humanitarians 
see in Russia the enemy. Hence the lies about her 
flogging her H. G. Wells's. Hence the insistence on 
the persecution of the Jews. Some of these pacifist 
people, so full of peace and goodwill when the cost of 
armaments is under discussion, yet fan every little 
flame of hate against Russia, and one might imagine 
that if the little flame led to a conflagration of war 
between us and Russia they would be in the front 
rank of rejoicers. Not they ! They would slink off 
and let the ignorant masses whom they had gulled 
shout the cheers for war. 

Thanks to the English friends of Russia and the 
Russian friends of England we are fighting on one side 
to-day for a common end. And Russia is our staunch 
friend. She enables us to defeat the Germans. Those 
who are whispering treason against Russia are those 
who in time of peace did everything to weaken us. 
They were poisoning our youth and spoiling our women 
with indecent novels and plays; they were turning 
our national attention exclusively upon the mentally 
deficient, the aged, the slum-dwellers ; they were doing 
their best to stop the growth of the Navy and to under- 
mine the loyalty of the Army. They were discouraging 
Imperial unity and Colonial friendship. They have 
done their best to damage Anglo-Russian friendship. 



220 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

collecting the riff-raff of German Jews and Russian 
subjects fled from Russian justice, some of them 
political idealists and honourable peace-loving citi- 
zens, but many drawn from the criminal class of the 
East end,* to protest in the name of England against 
Russian domestic and Imperial policy. 

There is room for liberal thought about Russia. 
True Liberals are most precious to us. We need to be 
reminded of the rights of small nations to fulfil their 
national destinies, and not be absorbed into large 
empires. Behold, Liberals have the ear of Russia! 
It is a Liberal Government that represents England 
in the Anglo-Russian friendship. Liberals have in- 
estimable power to help Russia — by loving her, not 
by criticising and attacking her. I would say to 
Liberals — Read Dostoieffsky, and Tchekof, and Kou- 
prin, and Gorky and Sologub, read my own story of 
the Russian pilgrims ; go to Russia, talk to Russians, 
but do not read Shaw on Russia, or even Wells on 
Russia, and do not go to Jews and talk to them of 
Russia. By the negative side, even if it be a true 
negative side, you cannot know Russia. There is 
something stronger than nagaikas and pogroms that 
keeps the Tsardom together — the Tsardom that 
survived the terrible Japanese War and was still strong 

* A great deal of East-end crime, such as the Tottenham outrages, the 
Hounsditch murders, the Stinie Morrison (ahas Stein) affair, have been 
associated with Russian subjects, not with pure Russians, it is true, but 
with members of Russia's subject races. 



DISTRUST OF RUSSIA 221 

enough to overcome the greatest revolutionary move- 
ment of modern times. Knowing Russia, you will 
find a common ground. Knowing and loving Russia, 
spiritual forces will flow into your life and your destiny. 
Russia known and loved by you will profit by your 
long Western experience, your trained hand and 
practical intelligence. All Liberals who are true 
Liberals, and wish from their hearts the welfare of 
small nations and of individuals, and who would always 
safeguard to these the opportunity to fulfil their 
national and individual destiny, should take these 
words to heart. In the case of nations and individuals 
affected by the government of Russia you can help 
them most by loving and trusting Russia ; you do not 
help them at all, on the contrary you frustrate them, 
by remaining ignorant of mighty Russia, attacking her, 
threatening her. 

As it is among individual friends, so it is among 
national friends. If you love Russia she will love you 
in return ; if you are generous to her she will never be 
outdone in generosity. 

"The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him, 
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him, 
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him, 

— it cannot fail." 



Ill 

The Settlement of Peace 

We are at war with Germany, and, for the time 
being, with the German Idea. We are at war with 
German ruthlessness, with that barbarism that does 
not stay the German as he rushes rough-shod over 
other nations' holy ground. We are at war with 
Germany's disregard for other people's feehngs, with 
Germany's wish to Germanise territory and nations 
that have no sympathy with Germany or German 
culture. Consequently, when the war closes with 
victory over Germany we must hope that it will close 
with victory over the German idea also. Peace, when 
we make it, should be peace over the ruins ^f Germany ; 
it should also be peace over the beaten and frustrated 
German idea. Let us be on our guard lest though 
we beat Germany the German idea gain the better 
over us, win our sympathy and enter into alliance 
with our thoughts. We fight like EngHshmen, let 
us make peace like Englishmen. 

At least, let us not make for ourselves the sort of 
peace that Germans would have made for themselves 
had they won. 

222 



THE SETTLEMENT OF PEACE 223 

Our true peace as Englishmen, Frenchmen and 
Russians should be a peace founded on a love of dif- 
ferences and a reverence for distinguishing marks. 
In difference we see a divine manifestation of the God 
who makes both the daisy and the rose, and the tiger 
and the mouse, and the eagle and the mole, each 
perfection of its kind. Difference is God's beauty and 
the sign of His creative fingers. It is difference that 
thrills us towards life — similarity and monotony that 
cause us to become dull and to die. Tacitus wrote of a 
conqueror that he made a desert and called it peace — 
that was a German peace. We wiU not make a silence 
and call it peace, or a great collective State, or an 
Empire over enslaved nations, but instead, we will make 
a singing, and give land and freedom to small nations 
and let them live under their own little flags and speak 
their own language and chant the poems of their own 
song-books. Poles shall be Poles and shall not call 
themselves Russians, Jews shall call themselves Jews 
and not Russians or Germans or English. They can 
call themselves Americans, but then America is a nation 
in synthesis. America is the melting-pot where pure 
types are lost in order that a new type may be brought 
forth. Finns shall be Finns and shall reahse them- 
selves in Finland. The Slavs shall escape from the 
Austrian yoke but shall not thereby fall under the 
yoke of the Great Russians. The Belgians shall be 
set on their feet once more. Alsace shall be free to be 



224 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

French. Power to change nationahty shall be with- 
held. No Germans, Russians, Jews, Poles, and so 
forth, shall be allowed to masquerade as British under 
legal recognisance of a change of nationality. Ireland 
and Ulster shall both be free. 

International understanding is often very Hke matri- 
monial understanding. It occurs that those people 
who rush to marriage with the joy of feeling themselves 
aUke in every way, find afterwards that there are 
many dissimilarities, and one tries to enslave the 
other's personality, or there is an open rupture. The 
understanding that is best founded and is Hkely to 
last longest is that which is founded on a love of the 
differences in the two personahties. 

There is a remarkable assumption in modern writers, 
especially in Socialist writers, that all nations are in 
themselves much of a muchness, alike in ideals, in 
temperament, and in possibiHty. According to these 
it is only the waywardness of certain Governments, 
like the British Government or the Russian Govern- 
ment, that stands in the path towards uniformity. 
They see ahead one language, one State for the whole 
of the world. That is the Socialist ideal. Those 
who have read ^^The World Set Free'' may remember 
how every character in the story, however foreign 
his name, is still in temperament an Englishman. 
Little stock is taken of the wonderful differences which 
separate as yet all the nations of Europe; the differ- 



THE SETTLEMENT OF PEACE 225 

ences in instinct, the necessary differences in destiny 
and in expression. The Sociahst World-State is formed, 
and there is seemingly no rebellion against its uniformi- 
ties. All use of weapons and of war is reserved to the 
police, who suppress at once any rebellion against 
the service of the World- State. To quote Bernard 
Shaw, who is one of the leaders of the Socialists in 
England : 

"You will reserve your shrapnel for the wasters 
who shirk their share of the industrial service of their 
country ; '' or again, 

"I hold no brief for small States as such. We are 
in no way bound to knight-errantry on their behalf 
against big ones.'' 

Liberals live on friendly terms with Socialists. But 
in this great hour of testing they will probably try 
many opinions of their Socialist acquaintances and 
find them in opposition to true Liberalism — true 
Liberalism being respect for the differences in individ- 
uals and, in nations, respect for the rights of individ- 
uals to follow out as they wish their God-given destiny ; 
respect for the rights of small nations to follow out as 
they will their destiny also. 

In this war, that is during the fighting of it. Con- 
servatives and Liberals alike in Russia and in Great 
Britain have found a common ground. That common 
ground will avail them as advantageously in the settle- 
ment of peace after the war is over. 

Q - 



226 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

If each individual will work out his political creed 
and see where he stands, and how he personally would 
like to settle the war, I feel sure that a great number 
who rather lightly give their support to the ideas of the 
hour wiU find that these ideas which I formulate are 
their own ideas, they will find under their feet a solid 
rock of personal conviction. 

As regards the literal fact of the settlement of peace, 
it is greatly more important to indicate the broad prin- 
ciples than to give them out with detail. The redis- 
tribution of Europe is a great and difficult task. It will 
need much delicate intelligence to demarcate the new 
boundary lines, to know how ^Ho take occasion by the 
hand,'' to know what functions may be given to each 
young State, to safeguard against immediate jealousy 
and resumption of war on a petty scale. When the 
war is over it will probably be better for each and all 
of us that it be really over for a while. We British 
at least will try to give the world a clean slate and 
start the nations without any debts or grudges — all 
trespasses forgiven. 

The most honourable terms of peace would be per- 
haps the following : — 

Germany give to Belgium Aix-la-Chapelle and 

Cologne, and also sufficient of a war indemnity 

to start her on her feet again. 

Britain ask no return of the money she has 

given to Belgium, Russia and France, or of the 

money she has herself spent on the fighting. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF PEACE 227 

Part of German Poland — not all, for that would 
mean coming within fifty miles of Berlin — be added 
to the whole of Austrian and Russian Poland, and a 
Russian protectorate or Polish independent king- 
dom be estabHshed. 

Russia's right of entry into the Mediterranean be 
estabHshed; Constantinople be put under Russian 
protection, and the Cathedral of St. Sophia given to 
the Russian Orthodox Church ; St. Sophia's become 
the St. Peter's of the Eastern Orthodox Church — one 
arm being the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Con- 
stantinople, the other the Patriarchate of Moscow. 

Alsace-Lorraine be given back to the French. 

The Jews be put at Hberty to form a Jewish Gov- 
ernment in Palestine, and Jews all the world over 
be given the option of becoming Jewish subjects. 

The German Fleet be taken over by her present 
foes and divided between them in Heu of war indem- 
nity — so safeguarding German science and research 
and culture from entire suffocation. We need Ger- 
many shining in the new Europe. Germany extin- 
guished would be a terrible blow. 

Japan have a protectorate over Tsing-Tau and be 
guaranteed from European molestation in China and 
the Pacific. 

German African colonies be restored to Germany. 

Most of these terms can be obtained if the Allies 

co-operate in a friendly spirit, seeing one another's 



228 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

difficulties and helping where they can, always remem- 
bering that it is a big thing they are planning and 
shaping, and not in any sense a personal or mean one. 

Russia is distrusted by many — but if we know 
Russia, understand her, love her, Russia will know 
us and recognise our love. She will be quite easily 
amenable. She wishes a good settlement as sincerely 
as we do, but she is not going to be left behind if we 
or the French are going to be selfish and seek our own 
ends. 

We ought to remember that commerce is a second- 
ary consideration. If we get the right national peace, 
commerce will take care of itself. 

And peace is not a primary consideration either. 
War will break out again — that is in the nature of the 
world. We must not be afraid of that. War has 
helped us back to reality now — it will help us or 
others again when necessary. Be sure at least we are 
not settling peace on national lines in order that there 
may never again be war. We are going to settle it 
on national lines because we feel that it is good to do 
so. As God made each new different living thing in 
the world and saw that it was good, so we shall save or 
resuscitate nationalities because it is fit to do so and 
will be good, being done. In fact, war becomes more 
likely the more little States there are. In a world 
of thousands of small States there is always a war going 
on somewhere — in a world composed of two or three 



THE SETTLEMENT OF PEACE 229 

vast Empires there is long peace. That is perhaps a 
debatable point, but the other point is not really 
debatable — we will make peace on national lines 
because it is just and fitting to do so. Our primary 
reason is that it is just, and that reason needs no help 
from other reasons. 



IV 

Arbitration 

The signing of the Russo-American Convention 
was received with acclamation in the Russian Press. 
"Henceforth there will be eternal peace between 
America and Russia/' wrote the Editor of the Russian 
Word. "Let us hasten to conclude similar treaties 
with other powers — especially with Sweden and 
Norway, who feel so much in danger of our Imperial 
arm.'' I read in another Russian paper a translation 
of an article which apparently had appeared in the 
American Outlook. It was quoted with approval : — 

"The time is coming when nations will become so 
civilised that they will not settle their quarrels by fight- 
ing, but will go together to an impartial international 
court and there await a verdict. 

"Then, in such a case, a nation like Servia would be 
tried on the accusation of Austria, and the matter un- 
ravelled and blame allotted where blame is due, and a 
guarantee against new trouble would be obtained. 

"The world will look back with astonishment on 
the barbarism of a previous age, when Austria could 
fall on Servia and take at once the roles of judge, prose- 
cutor, plaintiff, jury, and executioner." 

230 



ARBITRATION 231 

"After the war/^ says another Liberal paper of 
Russia, "we shall look forward to a lasting peace 
throughout the world and the establisliment even- 
tually of the federation of Europe — the United States 
of Europe. That is what we are fighting for now — 
Peace and Federation, the recognition of private in- 
terests, but also the subordinating of private interests to 
the common weal, the recognition of nationality, but 
the subordination of national interest to European 
interest, to world interest. Such a trifling matter, as 
whether Russian Jews who have gone to America and 
have been naturalised as American citizens shall be 
allowed free access to Orthodox Russia, would not 
then jeopardise the lives of tens of thousands of fighting 
men in America and Russia. The inherent rightness of 
Russia's plea would then be made evident in court 
and the question would be closed." 

A pleasant and a broad vista was disclosed in this 
article and one that would win a great deal of sympathy 
in the West. The war affords, no doubt, such exalted 
points of view. 

Still, though I have stood myself and looked out over 
the new spaces of time and possibility revealed by the 
war, I do not see the world so smiling. I do not see 
it so happily parcelled out, do not see so far. I see 
mists and darkness between nations, rivers of blood 
between them, dark clouds of resentment overhanging 
some of them, pride and prosperity befooling others. 



232 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

But to consider the fair Western vision as it has been 
described — What of diplomacy? Many aver — and 
among them he who most of all has a passion for 
shattering the world to bits and then remoulding it — 

"nearer to the heart's desire" 

that this war is going to make an end not only of war 
itself, but of the diplomatists. But it seems to me that 
even if it were likely that wars would cease that very 
fact would increase the number of diplomatists. Di- 
plomacy is the way of arranging difficulties in time of 
peace. Diplomacy is verbal and social strateg}^ One 
might as well say that after this war we are going to get 
rid of literary agents, lawyers, cabinet ministers, match- 
making mothers and our capable selves. We are all 
more or less diplomatists. Diplomacy fills the time of 
peace, and when war comes, either national or private, 
it is often as a relief, a release from words, politeness, 
flattery, deceit. 

Some people speak of arbitration as if it were a blessed 
dispensation of providence, a means of finding Divine 
justice and equity. But as a matter of fact the process 
of arbitration — diplomacy, is also a war of its kind, a 
struggle between astute men with white hands and silk 
hats, a deadly struggle for the furtherance of personal 
ends. It is not the baaing of lambs on a hillside. 
Nations will still win their case by arbitration, for di- 
plomacy is also force. Some nations are strong in 



ARBITRATION 233 

diplomatic gifts like the Jews and the Russians, others 
are weak like the Germans and the British. The Rus- 
sians, for instance, are so gifted that despite a superficial 
aspect of frivolity and nervousness they may always be 
backed to come out well from diplomatic struggles. 
No, it is not Britain's role to trust her destiny to 
conferences. If conferences must occasionally be, 
let them be few and simple. Simple national demands 
enforced by national power and national moral right 
are what we mlist make, and we must make them 
direct. If wars turn up occasionally it will be better to 
bleed for a cause and an ideal than to be slowly bled 
away by smiling foes. We shall not need to fight often 
if we show ourselves strong and generous and kind, 
if we assume the good side of the world and let our flag 
stand for fairness, honour, good sport, good life. 

The verdict of arbitration can only be acceptable as 
the light of pure reason, and it cannot be a pure verdict 
as long as the representatives of the nations are backed 
by immense armies and unlimited wealth. 

When the fortunes of the present war are made clear, 
the party that knows it is beaten may as well resign, 
and, of course, pourparlers of peace will be exchanged. 
When some basis of settlement that can be profitably 
discussed is found, there will be a conference between 
the representatives of Germany, Austria, and Turkey 
on the one hand, and Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, 
and Japan on the other. The scheme for belligerent 



234 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Europe and Asia will then be put forward in a direct 
form. The broad principle of settlement will be in- 
dicated at the outset — that is, I presume, the national 
principle of historical territory to the nations to which 
the territory nationally and historically belongs. 

It seems to me there will be no need to ask non- 
belligerents to vote upon the matter. America, Italy, 
Sweden, Holland may want fingers in the pie. America 
especially, as the only first-class power not fighting, 
may be expected to claim the right to be a party in an 
arbitration conference. 

But, I am told, America won't be asked to meddle in 
it. The answer to that is : — Germany will ask that 
America's offices be called in. Germany has had an 
eye to that from the beginning, and has spent an im- 
mense amount of money in order to obtain an unfair 
advantage through America's partiality. She has 
not failed in her propaganda in America. It is even 
part of German- American policy to make England think 
that she has failed, and that the whole of America is 
hilariously on the side of the Allies. We could not in 
honour accept the arbitrament of a nation that claims 
its right to arbitrate because it is on our side. We 
cannot accept the arbitrament of a nation that gives 
hospitality to the paid agents and propagandists of 
the other side. 

But Germany will put her up as a necessary im- 
partial voice in the conference after the war. But let 



ARBITRATION 235 

the Allied nations make up their minds to it now — 
those who have fought and those only shall decide the 
terms of peace; those who have not fought may 
formulate recommendations and send them to the con- 
ference, but they shall have no casting vote — no vote, 
in fact, at all — in the dehberations. 



The Future of the Russian Empire 

When the war is over and Germany is laid low, 
two Empires will stand facing one another, a land 
Empire and a sea Empire, two Empires and two 
peoples, the Russian and the British. The spectre of 
the German in complete armour has depressed us 
both, and caused us to think httle of ourselves. But 
with the disappearance of the spectre we look at one 
another and see ourselves as we really are. 

Even as the war goes on the greatness of Russia be- 
comes more and more apparent, as if a mist were lifting 
off great mountains. Russia is emerging, and she 
looks so vast that it tires the eyes to look over her. 

We see her plains and her forests and her mountains, 
her ploughed fields, trackless woods, great hills, the 
majestic Caucasus with its long line of everlasting 
snow, the pretty birch-covered Urals agleam with 
precious rocks. We follow her great and tranquil 
rivers, the Volga flowing south, the melancholy Pet- 
chora, Dwina, Obi, Yenisei, Lena flowing through 
forests to the Arctic. We see the lakes and inland 
seas that she encloses. We see the endless steppe 

236 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 237 

awave with boisterous prairie grass, and we look over 
the vast Central Asian background of salt deserts 
gleaming with crystal, of the irrigated yellow fields 
of Turkestan and Seven Rivers away to the Mon- 
gohan trade routes, where the wealth of China issues 
forth in caravans of thousands of camels, away to the 
Great White Ones, the Altai mountains, the backbone 
of Asia, we look along the wild Chinese marches where 
the Siberian rivers rise, where hundreds of miles are 
common as leagues in other continents, away to the 
far Pacific. Or northward the eye ranges over Siberia, 
and the great Northern Empire becomes visible, fring- 
ing in ice and snow a third of the way round the Pole. 

On this wild world of the Russians live all manner of 
tribes — Russians, Poles, Jews, Finns, Georgians, Os- 
setines, Cherkesses, Kirghiz, Kalmouks, Shamans, 
Dunkans, Turkomen, Sarts, Afghans, Tartars, Ostiaks, 
Yakuts, Zirians, Samoyedes, an innumerable diversity, 
various in reHgion and tongue and dress. And one 
of the most remarkable and least remarked facts about 
all these tribes is that they are distinct. They do not 
intermarry, they preserve their own tongue and their 
own religion. They live as they please. In Russia 
the races are purer than in any other land in Europe. 
The Russians themselves are a remarkably pure type. 
Russianisation scarcely ever means the forcing of 
tribes to take on the semblance of Russians — it means 
occasionally the forcing of other races to obey laws 



238 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

they do not want, or it means, as in the case of the 
Ejrghiz and Kalmouks, the loss of traditional pasture 
grounds given to new-come Russian settlers, but it 
means nothing so deadly or systematic as Prussianisa- 
tion. Under the crust of bureaucratic or absolute 
rule there is in Russia a remarkable freedom, even a 
spirit of Liberahsm. Thus, the Tsar has several 
millions of peaceful Mohammedan subjects, and they 
are never interfered with even by missionaries — the 
Government even grants them facihties for making 
the pilgrimage to Mecca, and treats them more as if 
they were a branch of their own Church. There is 
freedom of religion in Russia, and Baptists and Evan- 
gelicals are putting up new chapels in every city. 
Even the Skoptsi, the celibate sect that believes that 
mankind, by having no children, should come to an 
end, are allowed to flourish, and nearly all the shops 
in one street in Moscow are kept by them. In Russia 
each caste is distinctive : you do not need to ask a 
man whether he is a peasant or a workman or a Tartar 
or a Jew or a Caucasian tribesman or a Kirghiz. It 
is at once obvious by his distinctive dress. 

But Russia's greatness lies not in her government, 
nor in her national efiiciency, nor in the army she can 
bring forward, nor in the inexhaustible resources of 
her coimtry, but in her people, in her great strong 
human family, in her deep roots, her widespread 
national life, her big religious men and women, and the 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 239 

plenty of space they have in which to live. The 
Russian people has racial youth, nerve, and destiny; 
nothing can effectually stand in its way. 



As I have lately wandered across Russian Central 
Asia, from the Caspian Sea to the frontiers of Siberia 
and Mongolia, all that vast territory which is printed 
yellow on our maps and marked with vaguely wan- 
dering caterpillars for mountains and troubled worms 
and millepedes for rivers, I have a very clear picture 
of one of the youngest colonies of the Russian Empire. 

It has become very real to me. It is up-to-date in 
my mind. When I make my map of the country I shall 
erase half the Oriental names printed on our maps and 
substitute Russian ones, shall mark in new railways, 
new roads, irrigation systems, lately discovered lakes 
and mountains. 

Russia does not advertise her doings, and as yet the 
travel book is almost imknown in Russian literature. 
For English people wanting to find information about 
interesting parts of the Russian Empire there is nothing 
that the translator can put his hand to and translate. 
The educated Russians are content to Hve in com- 
parative ignorance of their own country and their own 
peoples. Of all the newspapers there is only one that 
is well served with information regarding the Empire, 
and that is the Novoe Vremya, read by some himdred 



240 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

thousand people of the mihtary, aristocratic, and 
official castes. Russia has not had clear sight of the 
enormous importance in the world her Empire is. It 
has, therefore, been difficult for us to reahse it — 
especially as half our attention was taken up by the 
German bogey. We have surmised with some distrust 
the military and political advance of Russia in the 
East. We have not read the homely word Colonisa- 
tion under the bitter word Russification, nor seen 
the peasant pioneers going before military interference 
and giving a natural plea for imperial absorption. 
The great fact about Northern Persia, Western and 
Northern Mongolia and the inclusive regions of Trans- 
Caucasia, Turkestan, and Seven Rivers Land is that 
there is an incessant stream of peasant colonisation 
thither — Hke a river of men flowing out of the depths 
of European Russia. What is called Russia in Asia 
is ceasing to be part of Asia and is becoming part of 
Europe in the political sense. 

Whilst I tramped Eastward, across Russian Central 
Asia, aU the early part of summer I was scarcely 
ever out of sight of the caravans of the Russian peasant 
pioneers. At night they camped on the open steppe 
as I did, sleeping under the stars; in the morning 
when the horses or oxen were put in and the caravan 
started once more it was with eyes and faces towards 
the dawn. 

The days were so hot that everyone was up betimes 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 241 

and the road was filled with traffic, whilst only in the 
east there was whiteness and over the rest of the sky 
the jewelled darkness of night. I was awakened 
regularly by the heavy lumbering of wheels, and look- 
ing to the high road saw the little patches of grey 
and black that were wagons moving away towards 
the pallor of dawn, breaking the silence of night with 
the peculiar grunting and cracking sound of heavy 
merchandise moving slowly and ponderously on creak- 
ing drays. 

There were the carts of new settlers aU going a 
thousand versts and more; there Vv^re the carts of 
traders who go to hawk their goods in the villages, 
carts with consignments of goods, native carts with 
8 ft. wheels, carts harnessed to buUs, to oxen, to camels. 
There were strings of camels mth merchandise ; camels 
with mountains of sheepskins on their backs, and on 
top of the mountains men. There were whole tribes 
with their herds and their tents, the women all on 
brilliantly caparisoned horses, the men on undulating 
groaning camels. 

We went from oasis to oasis. About every ten miles 
there was a Russian \iLlage, not a weary, sun-stricken 
collection of mud huts, but a real little Russian village, 
with white cottages and thatched roofs, wdth schools 
and churches and little shops — but how much more 
delectable than in Russia ! First, afar, you saw a 
clump of green trees; then as you got nearer you 



242 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

distinguished ranks of green poplars — young, tall, 
regular, and lofty. Then you came to a notice-board 
that told the date of the foundation of the village and 
the number of souls, male and female, at the last 
census thus : — 

Krasnovodskoe, 

founded 1884. 

Souls 

500 male, 

400 female. 

The ratio was generally as five is to four. Then you 
entered a beautiful shady village where the cottages 
had front gardens and roses abloom. 

I found the villages an interesting contrast to those 
in Russia. In Russia the villages are in the clearings, 
and dense forest lies between; but here the land was 
bare of trees all the way between, and the villages 
were in little forests of their own growing. But, of 
course, none of the Russian trees, no pines, firs, birches, 
maples, but poplars, willows, acacias without end. 
Water ran along hundreds of gulHes, and the ducks 
flopped about in them, and called to one another. 
The houses when you entered them you found to be 
thick-walled, cool, white, and astonishingly clean. 
The settled population was tall, strong, clear-eyed, 
and rich as Russian peasants go — but without any 
knowledge of what was happening in the world where 
newspapers exist. For the rest there was an air of 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 243 

smartness and newness as if all the people had new 
hopes — something of the spirit of America rather 
than of Russia. As the wagons all stopped at the 
villages and the colonists and hawkers swarmed into 
the little inns there was always a great deal of life and 
merriment. But no one could stop long. The road 
called relentlessly, even at midday. 

How hot it was ! In order to make my siesta at 
noon it was necessary to improvise a tent, tying my 
green plaid to a telegraph pole and to various heavy 
stones on the ground and getting thereby a patch of 
shade in which I could sit and wonder what the tem- 
perature might be. How thankful I was when a little 
breeze began to flap and ripple in the folds of my plaid 
thus stretched. The people on the road went on, 
heat or no. A Sart came past in a blue cloak and with 
a tinsel skull-cap on his head ; he looked like a represen- 
tation of the Chinese Emperor in a comic opera. Five 
soldiers came by in a native cart, the roof painted in 
sky-blue blobs on dirty cream, the horses with ten 
necklaces of blue beads round their necks and with 
dangling swishing brooms of red strings hanging from 
the high shafts and keeping the flies from the horses' 
sides. A native squatted on one of the horses and 
rested his flat brown feet on the shafts — the sun was 
nothing to him. The soldiers had evidently been 
discharged far away and had got to get home as best 
they could, and had clubbed together for this con- 



244 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

veyance. After them came weary soldiers clumping 
along on foot, and then people travelling in wagons 
and post-carts, and lying fast asleep in them. Then 
colonists once more, and the endless line of dusty, 
worn-out, lop-sided wagons that looked like enlarged 
pictures of old boots left in the mud. 

I pulled down my tent after an hour and got on a 
little way — to the next village. Before the village 
was a stream and a bridge. When I came up to it I 
found an enormous accumulation of carts all bereft 
of their teams — for horses and oxen had been let 
loose to graze — and under the bridge and along the 
river such a scene of Edenic simplicity and bliss as I 
had not witnessed since I went with the peasants to 
the River Jordan. I also had a bathe — a river with 
three feet of water is a rarity in these parts. Bright 
little tumbling river that rose in the mountains and 
went on across the high road to lose itself — not in 
any sea, but in the cruel desert, where it finally becomes 
nothing ! So, here for us afternoon turned to evening, 
with refreshment, and though the setting sun was 
still hot on our shoulders we felt night breezes fanning 
us in front. 

We passed through ancient towns — all mud huts, 
ruins, mosques. The bazaars had been made into 
covered bazaars by tying ropes across the busy streets 
and spreading green willow branches across them. 
Here sat the natives at work at their trades or lounging 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 245 

in their caravanserais, or waiting for koumis customers. 
There were falcons in cages in many of the Httle shops. 
Sarts on horseback came carrying their pet falcons on 
their wrists as they went. 

One evening I cHmbed up on to a green tableland 
surrounded by rocky simimits and snowy peaks, a fine 
romantic camping ground, and there I fell in with a 
band of rich emigrants going from Stavropol, in South 
Russia, to beyond Kopal. They had twenty-four ox- 
drawn carts and twelve drawn by horses, and in the 
carts were their household goods — tables, chairs, beds 
and bedding, agricultural implements, reaping and 
binding machines, ploughs, grindstones, saws, axes, 
even metal baths, barrels, guns, pots, and whatnot, 
in such miscellaneity and promiscuity mixed with 
mothers and babies, that it was touching to see. The 
oxen in their wooden yokes were fine beasts and the 
emigrants tended them on foot. Every wagon was 
accompanied by one or two on foot, who flicked off 
the flies and encouraged the oxen along, sang songs, 
and shouted to one another. Every wagon had 
buckets swinging at the side. One wagon had several 
cages of doves fixed on to it; to another a poor old 
dog was tied and came along unwilHngly. In short, 
everything they could bring from Mother Russia to 
the new land the emigrants had brought. 

"How long have you been on the way?'^ I asked. — 
"Fourteen days in the train and twelve on the road,'' a 



246 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

boy answered me. '^How many days to go?" — 
''Thirty, perhaps/' 

I had been much astonished to see a drunken party 
in one of the villages as I came along — a score of men, 
young and old, all with their arms round one another's 
necks and singing frantic tunes. I took it to be a 
wedding, but was mistaken, for I afterwards found it 
belonged to this party of emigrants. Presently a 
cartful of drunkards came rattling past me at a furious 
rate. They were all singing the Church service, one 
in a red shirt was trying to keep time with his hand, 
another was astride the side of the cart and had one 
leg in and one out, an old greybeard was sitting with 
his back to the horses, and a young man was sitting 
down among the other people's feet. In the cart 
was also a little girl — somebody's darling. They 
went along at a terrific pace, and as they passed me, 
despite their bawling, I heard one man say: "No! 
Wait a bit, you've not got it right." But no one paid 
any attention to him, and the huUaballoo went on — 
" Yaoh, yaoh, yaoh, yu, yu, yohihoah . . . Yu." 

They caught up the main body of ox- wagons and 
held a parley with one of the young women tending the 
oxen, but were evidently rebuffed, for when I caught 
up, the old man was saying, ''I said we were fools, we 
were making a mistake ; great fools." Saying which he 
was pouring out glasses of red wine from a half-emptied 
gallon bottle and spilling as much as he poured. 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 247 

"Do these dear drunken fellows belong to your 
party?" I asked of the boy with whom I had fallen 
into conversation. 

"Yes, ours. They are all that are left. Many have 
fallen behind, and they will have to hire carts if they 
want to catch up.'' 

"Are you all going to Kopal?" 

"Yes. No room to live in Russia. We have been 
trickling thither from our part for a long while. Many 
of ours out there — many." 

"Have you got land out there?" 

"Yes, we have taken land. We sent a man out 
and he has found us good land, and all our people are 
going, young and old. Nobody remains behind." 

He, in turn, asked me whether I was going out to 
work on a farm or going to buy land or what, and I 
told him as best I could, and he told me to put my 
pack on one of the wagons, for it must be heavy. 
"All the same," said he, "on foot or travelling with 
oxen, you have got to walk nearly all the time. But 
it is not good to have a weight on your back as well." 

After this for many days I was in sight of this cara- 
van of wagons, watched their progress, and had many 
talks, sometimes resting my pack with them, but 
more often falling behind or going ahead of them. At 
night I spread my plaid near them, watched their 
fires light up, listened to the frequent crack of the 
gun — for they shot any bird or beast they saw and 



248 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

consigned it to the evening pot, was lulled to sleep 
by their Russian songs, and eventually wakened next 
morning by the roll of their wheels on the road. The 
drunken ones, I may say, gradually caught up and 
became sober. They took their places beside the 
straining beasts of burden, and let the others rest in 
the canvas or bast-shaded wagons. One morning 
when a wheel broke, behold the old greybeard, axe in 
hand, busily at work at repairs. 

One day in the heat of noon we came to a little 
brook, and so overwhelming was the heat that the 
whole long procession came to a standstill, and the 
oxen were let loose on the moor. They were furious 
with thirst, but would scarcely look at the water, so 
shallow and muddy was it. They were loose in pairs 
with their necks still in their wooden halters, so it 
was very difficult for them to lie down or get rest. 
They began to try to gore one another, and to bolt, 
and for three or four hours the emigrants tried in 
vain to pacify them, and bring them back to the shafts. 
On another occasion we went some fifty miles without 
coming to a house or a stream or a bit of shelter, and 
our sufferings were all rather heavy. Such is the way 
of the road. Such is the way of the pioneers of the 
Empire. 

The Russian Government controls the stream of 
emigrants and defines precisely where colonists may 
go and where they may not go. It dams a river and 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 249 

deflects the water through a stretch of country needing 
irrigation, and that done, lets the stream of people 
follow the water. It marks out plots of land and plans 
villages all in advance of the arrival of newcomers 
who will occupy them. Even so, nothing is left hap- 
hazard; the prospective settlements and farms are 
booked in advance, and the colonists travelling the 
long road with their wagons and effects have no hunt 
for land in front of them; they are going to definite 
places which they have agreed to occupy. We travelled 
from valley to valley with songs and hopes as to the 
promised land — land promised by the Tsar, and a 
ten- or twenty-pound Government loan with it into 
the bargain. 

Alas, not seldom it is not twenty pounds, or two 
hundred, or two thousand that would suffice to start a 
family on the land allotted. The colonists on the road 
nurse a happy dream — they are going to Eldorado, 
the future lies in their minds all glimmering in rose 
and gold. The sight of the prosperous villages they 
pass through confirms them in the behef that they are 
going to a land three times as rich and happy as that 
they have left. But often at the end of the way 
awaits them a dreary, treeless stretch of barren sand. 
The great shady villages of Syr Daria have taken 
twenty or thirty years to build up, and they started 
in better country. Even on the best virgin land 
immense labour is necessary, and, as I say, it is often 



250 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

a tract of desert that has been chosen, and no amount 
of labour would suffice to make it blossom as the rose. 
Fifteen per cent, of the emigrants return home to Russia 
empty handed, all lost. 

Legally they have only themselves to blame, though 
indeed they are more inclined to say it is the will of 
God than to blame anyone. The Russian Government 
invites no one to emigrate to Central Asia or to Siberia. 
That is the first sentence of the Government handbook 
on emigration. But seeing that there is ''no room to 
breathe" in some parts of Russia, and that the people 
are always moving outward, it takes upon itself the 
duty of regulating the movement, and providing all 
the help and protection for the colonists that is within 
its power. 

But, needless to say, the voluntary colonisation of 
distant parts of the Empire is extremely advantageous 
to the Russian Government in the furtherance of its 
political designs; the Government encourages the 
emigration of Russians to the very frontier lines, and 
even over the lines into Persia and China, and on the 
pretext of defending its interests lends its military 
power to the extension of its unnecessarily large domin- 
ion. The Russian Empire is vast, fertile and empty, 
but its southern and eastern limits are marked by a 
crust of colonisation. For instance, in the whole 
extent of Russian Central Asia it is only to the frontier 
of China that emigration is at present allowed. There 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 251 

is a long slender line of colonisation to the city of Verney, 
just a gossamer thread of villages, and then all about 
Jarkent and Kopal and Lepsinsk plots of land and pro^ 
spective villages in abundance. Nothing that is less than 
800 miles from a railway station is offered to the colonists. 

If a Russian family wishes to emigrate, the Russian 
Government insists that it send first of all a messenger 
— what is called in Russian a Khodok, one who walks. 
The Khodok is allowed to wander about and compare 
the plots of land offered by the Government and make 
a choice. He is obliged to have a stamped certificate 
from the family he represents, and he has then the 
power to take land in the name of this family. One 
Khodok may represent three families but no more, 
so they generally set out in twos and threes, since the 
Russian peasants are inchned to emigrate in numbers, 
almost in whole villages. Needless to say, these mes- 
sengers are sometimes stupid, sometimes adventurous 
men, who either select an absurd portion, or who dis- 
appear and never return. But most of them are level- 
headed peasants who do the best they can for the 
famihes who trust them. In any case, the respon- 
sibihty is great. 

The land being taken and the messenger returned, 
there is necessarily great excitement and hubbub in the 
village — and no doubt some repentance here and there. 
The families have to face the realities of voluntary 
exile, the parting with old faces, old scenes, the village 



252 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

church, the graveyard where their dead lie buried, 
Russia herself. They have to abandon their old 
cottages and sell at a loss many things that it would 
be folly to take with them. They have to pack their 
goods to take away, to see their live-stock bestowed 
in the cattle trucks, and get proper receipts for every- 
thing the railway is taking for them. For twelve 
roubles (twenty-five shillings) the railway will carry 
a ton 1,500 miles — a penny a hundred- weight a mile. 
They book their goods to the railway station nearest 
to the land they have taken, and take tickets for 
themselves in the emigrant's train. 

There are special rates for colonists that would 
astonish the comparatively obstructionary Canadian or 
American railways. The greatest distance you can 
travel straight on by rail in Russia is greater — some- 
thing hke 7,000 miles the distance from Odessa to 
Vladivostok. But such a journey costs only thirteen 
roubles or twenty-seven shillings — say, seven dollars ; 
and in order to reach the vast emptiness of the middle 
West and far West of America it is necessary to pay 
between ^ve and twelve pounds railway fare from 
New York. The following is the Russian rate : — 

500 versts, i.e. 375 miles i rouble 40 kopecks = 3 shillings 

750 " 4/6 

1,500 " 7/- 

3,000 " 12/- 

6,000 " 24/- 




Hoisting the Ataman at the mobilisation. The Cossacks also 
came to the author and said: " Pozuoltye vas raskatchat — 
permit us to give you a swing." 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 253 

So the price of a railway ticket is very little hindrance 
to the wandering of the Russian emigrant. The land 
they take at the end of a journey is given them free and 
is made their property under certain conditions. Loans 
are made according to the portion of the land and the 
difficulty of cultivating it. A hundred roubles in 
certain districts near Verney and Pishpek, two hundred 
roubles in the raions of Kopal and Jarkent. A hundred 
roubles is about ten pounds. The loan is made to the 
family and is returnable in fifteen years. The first 
^ve years nothing is paid back, but after that a tenth 
has to be returned each year. The Government is 
not, however, strict where a family is making a good 
fight for existence. In poor villages the Government 
takes upon itself the expenses of building materials 
for school and church — the colonists are recommended 
to give their labour free on ^'the work of God." Wells 
are sunk in places and roads made — a Government 
expense. It will be seen, therefore, that a great deal 
is done to substantiate the dreams of the colonists, 
and that where villages wither away and families 
desert their holdings and go home, failure is due to a 
mistaken original plan on the part of the Government 
surveyors and to a foohsh choice on the part of Khodoki. 
How different is the colonisation of the Russian 
Empire from our colonisation, and how different our 
Empire from theirs ! What an advantage the Russian 
has in being compact, all on land, all within the grasp 



254 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

of a possible railway system, and liable to one spiritual 
and national nourishment on direct lines. Our people 
are separated from one another by immense seas. It 
takes much longer time and costs vastly more money 
to make a journey from one part to another. In our 
prosperity we tend to forget our essential unity, to 
let loose the ties of the motherland or the children 
lands. We tend to be just English, no more ; to hold 
too narrow a conception of our race and function; 
whereas Russia, even in the days of failure and weak- 
ness, tends to be altogether, to be large but vital. 
If aU this Russian space does fiU up with Russians, 
what a collective voice Russia is going to have ! What 
a bass ! 

But to return to the colonists themselves and to my 
impressions of them as I journey through a new colonial 
country. I have not been very much impressed with 
the life of the new land. The settlers are prosperous 
and healthy, their houses are larger, cleaner, and more 
seemly than in European Russia, but the spirit that 
really makes Russia interesting to us Westerns is 
lacking. Religion is on the wane and national customs 
are forgotten. Nearly everyone can read and write, 
but reads so little and writes so ill. The illiterate 
man may be as wise as Solomon, but the man who 
has learned to read has the whole long road of culture 
in front of him. In a land where there are no squires, 
no gentry, no intelligentsia, the colonist forgets where 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 255 

he stands with regard to his fellow men and to the 
world, and he quickly assumes that classes are divided 
by wealth and wealth only. The motto of the colonist 
is "get rich." There is little else in the life of Central 
Asia but the nascent gospel of "get rich'^; it is full 
of cheating, swindling, harrying the Kirghiz and the 
Sart, colonial vulgarity and "bounce." As I read in 
the local pamphlet, "it flatters one's self-esteem to be 
rich" — a thought almost essentially American, and 
certainly far removed from the religion of suffering. 
It wiU be interesting to see whether the cultural bar- 
renness of Australia and America is to be repeated 
in Siberia and Russian Central Asia. Perhaps not, 
seeing how much Hterary and artistic talent has been 
sunk in Siberia by the exile of revolutionaries, seeing 
also that the ever-increasing railway stem supplies 
or tends to supply the colonies with the literature of 
the great European cities. Already the Httle city of 
Verney sends some thirty matriculated students to 
the university each year ; at least, so I was told by a 
student whom I met at Pishpek, and with whom I 
journeyed part of his way home from Kief. And 
having gone through a university course is not a mark 
of wealth or social position in Russia, it is essentially 
an educational distinction. 

When I passed into Seven Rivers Land and beyond 
Verney along the Eastern frontier to Kopal it was 
touching to see the phght of the new settlers just 



256 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

arrived on their bit of land. Whatever hard word 
may be spoken of the estabHshed population must be 
withdrawn from these adventurous, much-suffering, 
much-hoping, much-believing people. All endeavour 
is blessed ; all success is in a certain sense abhorrent, 
and we look with smiles and tears at the labours of 
pioneers, whereas we curse in one short word the 
prosperity which follows twenty years after the pioneers 
have achieved the heroic task of making a village where 
no humans have ever dwelt before. It is our heroic 
human way of thinking; we honour all attempting 
and daring and sacrificing because they reflect the God 
in man. 

So along the Central Asian road human thrills are 
in store for every educated man observant of the 
beginnings of life. Here the 1,000-verst road journey 
comes to an end. The oxen are unyoked and the camp 
is pitched finally; good Russian prayers are said and 
words of thankfxilness that the long journey has come 
to its true and successful end, there are exclamations 
of gladness ; the colonists kiss one another and promise 
one another new life; there are also grumblings, 
lamentings, scolding of the messengers who have 
chosen ill. 

First of all trees are planted. How pathetic to see 
the long rows of three-feet high poplar shoots and 
willow twigs ! A month on this sun-beaten road 
leaves no doubt in the emigrant's mind as to what 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 257 

is the first necessity — shade, shade. Trees are planted 
all along the main Government dyke. The colonist 
chooses the place for his house and he digs a trench 
all round it and lets in water from the dyke, and he 
plants trees along the trench. Then he buys stout 
poplar trunks and willow trunks and makes the frame- 
work of his cottage. He interlaces little willow twigs 
and makes the sort of wilted green, slightly shady, 
slightly sunny house that children might put up in a 
wood in England. But that is only the beginning. 
To the willow house he slaps on mud-puddings. This 
is the filthiest work; he makes a great quantity of 
mud and treads it up and down with his bare feet till 
he gets the consistency he requires, and then with his 
hand he fetches out sloppy lumps of it and builds his 
walls. In a few days the mud hardens, and he has a 
shady and substantial dwelling and one that in an 
earthquake will swing, but will not collapse. His 
roof he makes of prairie grass, great reeds ten to fifteen 
feet in length and thick and strong, or of willow twigs 
again and turf. In his second year he has a little hay 
harvest on his roof. He ploughs his little bit of desert. 
He exchanges some of his oxen for cows. He strives 
with all his power — as does a transplanted flower — 
to take root. He looks forlorn. You look at his 
poor estate and say: ^^It is a poor experiment; the 
sun is too strong for him, he will just wither off and 
the desert will be as before. '^ But you come another 



258 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

day and you see a change and exclaim : ^^He has taken 
root after all; there is a shoot of young life there, 
tender and green." Along the road I noticed villages 
of all ages ; of this year, of last year, of four years 
gone; of twenty years, forty years. And I took 
shade now and then beside the deserted hovels of 
those whom the desert and the sun had beaten. 



Russia and Russian Central Asia and Siberia are in 
much more intimate relationship than Britain and 
South Africa, for instance. The heights of the Mon- 
gohan frontier are still Russia, and the colonists there 
are taxed from Russia, send their annual recruits to 
the Russian Army, are reached by land from Russia 
and look towards the great cities of the motherland, 
Petrograd, Moscow, Kief, as towards their own great 
cities. Our colonies are by no means extensions of 
Britain or of Europe. 

An interesting comparison may be drawn between 
the tasks of Russian and English statesmanship in 
the moulding of the respective Empires. The late 
Joseph Chamberlain saw the British Empire as a 
great self-supporting, self-sufficient unity, able to 
produce all the food and clothing it required, not 
needing to import anything from non-British countries. 
He wished a large thing — not a collection of separated 
fourth-rate powers making laws at will one against 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 259 

the other. He wanted the British subject to be always 
conscious that he was an integral part of something 
mighty and wonderful, wanted him to reflect in his 
soul a large consciousness, the sense of our whole vast 
majestical domain, and not merely the narrow con- 
sciousness of a little self- despising overcrowSed island 
or young commercial settlement. The consummation 
of such an ideal demanded a great ocean service and a 
mighty navy. England must remain, in fact. Mistress 
of the Sea, and the salt floods that separate should in 
reahty join us and be our national high roads. A 
great ideal — but it has turned out to be more difiicult 
to realise than the statesman imagined — the sea has 
separated us and has been difflcult to bridge over. 
There has not been the cheapening of passenger rates 
necessary for a great interchange of populations; 
there has been no journalistic entente between any of 
the countries of the Empire. It has been difficult to 
"get across'^ to one another, in body, mind or soul. 
Only now, perhaps, are we commencing an era in which 
great measures will be taken for the unification of the 
Empire. 

How much easier the task of Russia, the only other 
colonial Empire of to-day! Her distant populations 
have not crossed the seas. They have never felt them- 
selves to be separate communities with separate in- 
terests. Fares have always been cheap and time has 
never been valuable. No one except the political 



26o RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

exile and the convict has felt cut off from Russia, and 
only among the political and penal population in 
Siberia has the idea of separation found any home. 
There, by the way, it has, and many times in the 
backwoods of Siberia there has been mooted the idea 
of a new "War of Independence " and of the foundation 
of a "United States of Siberia." That was one of the 
dangers inherent in the policy of making Siberia the 
outer darkness of those who found no favour in the 
eyes of the Tsar. Siberia is in time of peace a Radical 
and disaffected country. 

It is otherwise, however, in Russian Central Asia. 
Here loyalty is supreme. No Radical and sectarian 
emigrants are allowed to settle there, and, above all, 
no one whose conscience will not allow him to bear 
arms. The Government has pursued a policy of making 
the population as miHtary as possible. In the event 
of a Mongol or Persian inroad the Russian colonists 
could hold their own without the help of the regular 
army. 

It is improbable that any Russian Government will 
grant local self-government to Turkestan, Seven Rivers 
or Siberia — unless at some time a revolution should 
take place and a demilitarisation of the Empire. The 
whole vast territory from the Caspian to Kamchatka 
will be administered as an imperial and military unity. 
And whilst it is held together in the strong grasp of an 
autocratic Government it is firmly bound together in 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 261 

a unity of commercial interests. By a skilful manipu- 
lation of tariffs and encouragement of industries, 
Russia is making herself a seK-sufficient Empire as 
far as necessaries are concerned. Agricultural and 
dairy products and meat she has, of course, in abun- 
dance, as a natural foundation. She makes all her 
own sugar, manufactures her own cotton goods, is 
even on a fair way to growing in Central Asia her own 
raw cotton, enough to supply the mills of Moscow and 
Lodz. She begins to manufacture her own wool and 
cloth in sufficient quantity. She has her own furs, her 
own timber, her own building materials. She is mining 
more coal and tapping more oil, and will certainly gain 
in time a sufi&ciency of fuel for all purposes. What she 
cannot produce for herself is machinery for her factor- 
ies, the knick-knacks which we in the West make 
by machinery, the luxuries of civiHsation. But even 
as regards luxuries she is well off — having her 
own good Crimean, Caucasian, and Central Asian 
wines, her own Caucasian tobacco, her own vodka 
and liqueurs, her caviare, her inexhaustible supply 
of game. 

In order to visuaHse the advantages of the Russian 
Empire as compared with ours, it is necessary to take 
our dominions and colonies out of their places on the 
map and tack them together with Great Britain, and 
imagine Canada sewed on to our western coast and 
Liverpool on the Canadian frontier, Eastbourne on the 



262 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

South African frontier, Southampton on the Indian, 
Land's End on the Austrahan frontier, trains taking 
only twenty-four hours to Toronto, only a week to 
Vancouver, thirty-six hours to Calcutta, sixty hours 
to Madras, twenty hours to Capetown, twenty-six 
hours to Brisbane, five days to Perth, Western Aus- 
tralia, and imagine the interchange of peoples and of 
products, the circulation of our newspapers, the 
audiences of our books and Parliamentary speeches, 
the enlargement of our interests and of our imperial 
pride. How great would our Empire seem, how 
strong — immeasurably larger and stronger than the 
British Empire as we now visualise it, floated away 
into the distant places of the seas. 

That is the advantage of the Russian Empire, that 
it can feel itself as Britain would feel in this imaginary 
picture of an all-on-land Empire. Despite the dream 
of separatists, Russia is not likely to give up this great 
source of strength — her essential unity. 

My feeling, however, is that the Russian Empire is 
large enough — perhaps already too large. The Rus- 
sians do not need to flood over towards Kobdo in Mon- 
golia or towards the Persian capital. They tend to 
lose themselves out there. Russia wants an outlet 
to the sea, but the Japanese War has shown her that 
she is vulnerable at places like Port Arthur, as the 
Crimean War showed her that she was vulnerable at 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 263 

Sebastopol. Only in the centre of Asia or of Europe 
is she safe.* . . . 

The new railway to Verney goes on to Kuldja in 
China and there is talk of its progression right across 
Mongolia to Kharbin. Undoubtedly it will cross 
China some time or other and tap a great deal of 
Chinese trade. Already the Russians are strong on 
the Chuisky Road that leads from Novy Nikolaefsk 
on the Siberian railway, through Barnaul and Bisk, 
Siberian river towns, through Kosh Agatch, the Altai 
frontier station, on to Kobdo in the heart of Mongolia. 
Great efforts are being made to capture the brick-tea 
trade and indeed Mongolian trade in general. Russian 
influence is so strong that Mongoha is in the nature of 
an extra colony — something that must necessarily be 
taken over by the Russians later on. It seems to me, 
however, they do not need any territory beyond "The 
White Ones" as the natives call the Altai, beyond the 
Ala Tau of Kopal and the great heights of Pamir. 
Within these natural boundaries they can evolve an 
unexampled prosperity — if that is what they wish. 

The Russian Treasury lost at least £50,000,000 per 
annum by the vodka prohibition. It lost another 
£50,000,000 by the cessation of imports and the con- 
sequent failure of import duties, f . • . 

* Opinion as to effectiveness of Russian Army excluded by British 
Censor. 

t Here followed 22 lines on the financial situation of Russia excluded by 
the British Censor. 



264 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Many new taxes have been introduced. Postage has 
been raised. It now costs twopence-halfpenny to send 
an inland letter instead of, as formerly, a penny three- 
farthings. An extra ten roubles (one pound) has been 
charged on telephones. The income-tax has been 
raised. New State lotteries have been issued. An 
extra tax has been levied on sugar, on matches. A tax 
on bread and on kerosine has been suggested. But 
Russia cannot readily right herself in that way. She 
is a spending country. Everybody in Russia likes to 
spend ; economy is very foreign to her temperament. 

Still Russia's power of recuperation after financial 
exhaustion is very great. The great mass of her 
population is peasant, and it works for a half or one- 
third of the normal European wage. One or two good 
harvests and Russia is on her feet again, and all Europe 
feels well as a reflection of Russian well-being. 

That is Russia's function, to supply Europe with 
bread. Even in war-time when all the youth has gone 
from the villages the fields are sown, women sow them, 
and if the war lasts over summer women will reap 
them and women will sow them again — women and 
children and old men. And when the war is over 
and the guns have been gathered in, the young moujiks 
and the Cossacks will return and give their arms to the 
work — and children will grow up and more children 
will be born. So . ^^^^ ^^^^^ f^^^^,^^ 

The new-born generations mask her grief." 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 265 

There is no new future for the Russian peasantry 
except a little modification in their methods of cul- 
tivating the soil, and in the implements they use. 
The great health of Russia will lie in the peasants 
remaining peasants. I would utter a warning to those 
well-wishers of Russia who think that it is necessary 
to educate the peasantry, and who sigh for a greater 
exploitation of Russian commerce. It is this : that 
if you educate the peasant, he will cease to want to 
plough; if you dangle before his eyes the tawdry 
recompenses of life in an industrial settlement, he will 
be tempted away. The peasants are happy on the 
land, thanks to the satisfying popular rites of their 
religion, thanks to village customs, village songs, village 
sociability. Do not pervert them en masse. They 
leave the land in quite sufficient numbers to nurture 
with their elemental instincts and knowledge of mother 
earth the universities and the arts. It is a barely 
credible fact that even to-day Russia is falling out of 
cultivation, and twenty per cent, more of her land is 
covered with forest than was in i860 — owing pri- 
marily to the liberation of the serfs, secondarily to the 
lack of interest of the landowners in their own estates ; 
and thirdly, to the lust of the peasants for industrial 
life. 

Russia will be exploited commercially as never before. 
We can be sure of that, whatever her harvests are. She 
will be too pressed for money to resist that exploitation. 



266 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

If the English and French and Belgians are clever 
enough, Russia and Siberia will become their exclusive 
field. Russia has a great deal to gain by friendly co- 
operation with these peoples. She need not, indeed 
I think she will not, throw open her broad lands un- 
restrictedly to commercial and mineral exploitation. 
But she is likely to grant many concessions. 

For my own part, I view foreign exploitation with a 
great deal of apprehension. It reacts very badly on 
the lives of the peasants, whose best function, as I 
have said, is to grow bread. It creates a growing dis- 
content in the minds of the workmen — always badly 
underpaid, if wages be compared with either Western, 
European, or American wages. It increases immoraUty 
and vulgarity; and, more than that, it has a subtle 
influence for evil upon whole countrysides. Take the 
life of the foreign mining experts, agents, engineers, 
managers, foremen, sent out by wealthy corporations 
to their Russian estates. They are princes of Russian 
travel. They pay the biggest fares, the biggest tips, 
live in the best rooms in the best hotels, make the 
grandest meals, those reserved and silent men, appar- 
ently uninterested in the lower life around them, the 
men who sit in proud isolation in first-class carriages 
reading " John Bull ^' or "Answers,'' scarcely ever looking 
out at the windows; or, if they are confronted by a 
native, eyeing him with a sort of sportive mirth as if 
he had escaped from a show; giving importunate 



FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 267 

beggars silver, paying anything that is asked, or that 
they dream fitting to whomsoever appears to have a 
claim upon them. When they get to the mine or the 
factory they meet their confreres, and grumble at the 
lack of comforts and the supposed ferociousness of the 
natives; they order from distant cities fruits, teas, 
biscuits, wines, what not, and pay double and treble 
prices for food, lodging, cooking, service. They go 
about with revolvers in their pockets, they pay bribes 
to the wrong people — always paying more than they 
need, and teaching the corrupt to expect more and to 
demand more. They teach the peasant workmen, 
through their own fear, to think of murder and robbery, 
teach them to ask higher tips, encourage them to 
grumble about wages — and then, when a vile state of 
affairs has been created on a countryside, they suddenly 
receive orders from home to commence an era of re- 
trenchment, and they begin to reduce wages and fight 
strikes — seldom retrenching in their own expenditure. 
There is one great hope : it is that sobriety will make 
the peasant workmen stronger. Where vodka shops 
have been closed they are in many cases to be opened 
as schools. Once the peasant has become a workman 
and a sober workman he ought to be set upon the long 
road of education. There he wiU in time make up his 
losses. High ideals should be set before the workmen 
and their children. They should be made to feel that 
learning and understanding are as long as life itself — • 



268 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

are indeed life itself. It is rudimentary education and 
the Universal Panorama and short cuts to knowledge 
that are dangerous. The Russian peasant, become a 
workman, is capable of great development. From the 
peasant you can breed a noble type, witness Shaliapin, 
the kingly actor and singer, once a dock labourer at 
Batum, now able to forget everything else and fill the 
role of Ivan the Terrible or of Boris Godunof. The 
Russian race is wonderfully pure. Serfdom seems to 
have been an accident. The serfs were not an inferior 
race or a different race. They were, in blood and spirit 
and instinct, the same as their masters. The peasant 
to-day, cultivated and carefully bred, would make a 
typical Tsar. Nevertheless, as I said, do not think of 
educating the peasantry en masse. Millions would halt 
at the perilous halting places on the long road of 
education and would so go to perdition. 



VI 

The Future of the British Empire 

The wounds in our trade, in the ordinary course of 
things, are all waiting to heal over and be as before. 
After the war comes a period of convalescence, a be- 
coming normal, a going-on. But England must not 
be allowed to fall asleep again. We must have a great 
England, an ideal, worthy of that vast number of people 
who speak our language and share our culture and 
traditions. Britain must reahse herself as true mistress 
of the seas — hospitable mistress. Let us live more on 
the sea! 

Russia and Russia's future suggest many things. 
And we may look towards Russia in order to see our- 
selves better. Though I do not suggest any rivalry 
between the British and Russian Empires, I do think 
we should do well to compare ourselves and learn what 
we can. The road is clear before Russia; she is an 
all-on-land Empire, and all she needs to do is to build 
more railways. That is simple, and indeed everything 
is simple for her. She is always a unity, always 
organically bound together as one thing, and she is 
going to have great advantages from that unity and 
from the simpHcity of her problems. 

269 



270 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Our destiny is on the sea. Our future is all problems, 
the sea itself being a problem. We also have to become 
a unity, not so much a unity of colonies, a unity of land 
painted red on the map, as a unity of peoples. We 
must not continue our poHcy of letting things shape 
themselves haphazard and trusting to racial pride and 
colonial loyalty to keep us always together. We have 
to make things easier. 

Our habit as Englishmen has been to concentrate 
our attention on the hfe of our httle island and to ignore 
the Hfe of the colonies as if it were something second- 
rate or third-rate. Even in this hour of need frequently 
we hear, in answer to such questions as, '' Aren't the 
Canadians loyal?" — ^^Yes, too loyal; " or ''Did you 
find New Zealand loyal?" — "Oh yes, a perfect hot- 
bed of loyalty." That is unkind to our brothers out of 
sight and out of mind, and it is bad for ourselves. It 
is not even a true sentiment, nor could it be really true. 

Imperialism has been unfashionable for a number of 
years, and the colonies have suffered by implication. 
We have given our colonists powers to look after their 
own affairs, and have begun to regard them as separate 
States. We have taken no care to give them spiritual 
nourishment, to give them the counsciousness that they 
are part of something very large, that their small 
destiny is part of a much greater thing, our imperial 
destiny. And we ourselves have also learned to think 
small. 



FUTURE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 271 

E. we are to counterbalance the Russian Empire we 
must be large. We cannot balance 200,000,000 people 
spread over half the globe by 60,000,000 huddled to- 
gether on our little island. We have not the back- 
ground, we have not a large enough thought in our 
consciousness. We must get altogether and be alto- 
gether. 

What can be done? 

The first thing that occurs to me from my wanderings 
in the Russian Empire is that we have to make the 
colonies nearer. We have got to think nothing of 
going to one of them and back. We have got to ex- 
change readily thoughts, books, people. We have been 
more interested in the United States than in our 
colonies. In a sense, interest in the States has come 
between us and interest in the people of our colonies. 
We have to realise that the United States is not one 
of our colonies but a foreign country with foreign 
interests. For the rest, we have to make bridges to 
Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, India. 

We need the Government to institute a State service 
of steamboats between the colonies and the mother- 
land, not try to make them pay, but to make of them 
public bridges between our far-off lands and ourselves. 
It should be possible for £1 to go anywhere in the 
British Empire, and we would pay for our meals as we 
wanted them, according to a tariff. 

Such an institution would be an immense gain. We 



272 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

have made transatlantic travel into a bit of snobbery. 
We have got to make the journeys on the sea unimpor- 
tant and ordinary. 

Quite obviously we diminished the cost of 'postage 
from a shilling to a penny in order that there might be 
a greater circulation of personal opinion and intelli- 
gence, and we had great gain. We diminished the 
price of new^spapers from threepence to a penny or a 
halfpenny in order that we might have more circulation. 
It is all to our advantage, and much more to our advan- 
tage, to increase the circulation of the people of our 
Empire by removing the prohibitive prices that we 
have to pay in order to cross from one land to another. 

The citizens of the British Empire want some privi- 
leges. They have not many more privileges at present 
than if they were Turks or Chinamen. We want im- 
perial confidence, we want to feel at home in the world 
and to go readily from one part to another. How 
greatly we should all gain by a quickening of our 
circulation and a sense of our or gam* c unity, by feeling 
that the distant limbs of the body politic responded to 
the impulse of the brain and the action of the heart. 

There is nothing to fear in the realisation of our 
Empire. Our days of aggressive Imperialism are over. 
We are ready to take over a desert here and there or 
occasionally to organise the government of some tribe 
that cannot govern itself, but we are not going to en- 
slave other nations or seize their land in order to ex- 



FUTURE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 273 

ploit it for ourselves. We have more territory than we 
have people, or can have people for many a hundred 
year to come. We have to go forward in love, not in 
distrust or jealousy. 

We look to those who come back from the war, 
those who have been touched by reahty and the face of 
death, the great force that should come into our stag- 
nant national life, bringing the quiet but potent 
thoughts dreamed out on the battlefield or sworn in 
the moment of danger and distress. These will bring 
their true passion to the making of the new life, the 
making of a good peace and the shaping of the future 
of our Empire. 



VII 

Naturalisation 

The war has raised in an urgent form the question 
of naturalisation. Have the British not been very 
slovenly and careless in the granting of the precious 
right of nationality ? Why should Russians, Germans, 
Poles, Jews, Italians, and what not have the right to 
be considered British subjects, our own people ? It is 
much better that Germans remain Germans to the 
end of the chapter. God made the Germans Germans 
as He made the black man black, German they should 
remain. Jews also should be Jews. In Russia a Jew 
becomes a Russian only when he gives up the Jewish 
faith and is baptised. In England also Christianity 
should be a compulsory qualification for complete 
nationalisation. Every man should have his papers 
of identity. 

In America of course it is different. The Americans 
are not yet a nation — in America a nation is being put 
together and established. But in Europe the nations 
are formed, they are sharply defined. Peace when it 
is accomplished will be on strictly national principles. 
The territory that is really German will remain German ; 

274 



NATURALISATION 275 

that which was French will become French again ; that 
which was Polish will return to Poland. Therefore, 
the individuals in England who are really Germans 
should be made Germans again and the Poles who are 
really Poles should be returned to Poland and so on. 
If that retrospective view of individual rights is difficult 
to enforce, provision can at least be made for the future 
that nationalities may be purer and that Poles and Jews 
may be given passports of Polish and Jewish national- 
ity, and that Germans be stopped masquerading as 
British. 

The whole Liberal principle of the rights of indivi- 
duals and of nations to be themselves and to realise 
their true individual and national destinies is bound up 
in this question of naturalisation. Liberalism is not 
chaotic freedom but ordered freedom. It is true free- 
dom. It not only sets free but it safeguards. The 
compulsory cessation of promiscuous nationalisation 
is a great safeguard of the rights of individuals and of 
nations. 



VIII 

Conscription 

A HAUNTING question of the day is : will there be 
conscription after the war ? Before the war a powerful 
party, led by Lord Roberts and ministered to by Lord 
Northcliffe, wanted it, but the overwhelming mass of 
the people were against it. Liberals and Socialists were 
against it en bloc, many Conservatives and also the man 
in the street. But the war has shown how great was 
the necessity for a large army. We have had to equip 
and train a million men in a terrible hurry and have not 
had clothes for them to wear or gims for them to 
shoot with or horses to put under them. And now we 
realise that it would have been better to have prepared 
our army earlier, better for us, better for the brave men 
who go to fill up death-gaps in the line of our regular 
army. 

Among Socialists have sprung up many conscription- 
ists, and Bernard Shaw is able to call for conscription 
for this reason — that since men may be forced to serve 
the state in time of war, they may also be forced 
to serve it in time of peace. He would have those men 
shot who in his opinion avoid serving the State. 

376 



CONSCRIPTION 277 

Wells, on the other hand, wishes every man to be 
famihar with the use of the gun, and to be able to 
defend his home and his countryside whenever occasion 
arises. The working men and the discontented would 
then have material power when they were organised to 
rebel. Strikes would become civil wars. The rich and 
those who are now powerful would find their position 
much less secure. Incidentally, we should, of course, 
be much more formidable in resisting an enemy invading 
our shores. 

The Quakers, the Tolstoyans, the Plymouth Breth- 
ren, and other quiet but none the less powerful com- 
munities are altogether opposed to the use of material 
force, and they could not be compelled individually 
to bear arms. By English tradition we should be forced 
to grant exemption to those whose conscience forbade 
them to raise the sword. The consequence would be 
that most of those who were not Quakers but who for 
ulterior reasons did not wish to serve, would be con- 
verted nominally to Quakerism or Tolstoyism or the 
like, and would so escape, putting the onus and the 
handicap on to those straightforward Englishmen who 
did not seek to evade the hard year or two years of 
training. 

But the question of whether we shall have a form 
of conscription or not is hkely to become a deadly 
political quarrel before it can be resolved. Liberals 
view with apprehension the coming of a military caste 



278 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

and the rising military contempt for civilians. They 
fear the miiform, the sign of the sword, the distinguish- 
ing marks of the new mihtary aristocracy. They know 
that an aristocracy founded on military rank is more 
difficult to overthrow than the old aristocracy founded 
on estates or money or tradition. They also say: Is 
not the German war the last war, did we not fight it so 
wholeheartedly because we felt it was not the Germans 
so much that we were fighting as war itself ? Has not 
our victory over the Germans been a victory over war ? 
Why, then, should we on the day of peace set out to 
prepare for wars to come, to attract by increased armies 
the fear and hate of other countries? 

No one is Ukely to answer these questions. We 
know, nearly all of us, that the idea of a last war was 
merely one of the bluffs of the beginning of the war, 
a pretext, a recruiting fiction, something to fill green 
young men with a high moral fervour. It was wrong 
to say it perhaps, but it was said. 

Alas, revenge is always heaping itself up ! Material 
force is the insolvable quantity. Even in Britain, which 
has had the smallest army and has prized peace most, 
the indignation of the people is put down with armed 
force, and we could not settle such a dispute as that 
between Ulster and the rest of Ireland without arming 
the parties. Hate is always gathering to centres and 
discharging itself. Nameless hate is in the air, and we 
capture it for ourselves and give it the name of our 



CONSCRIPTION 279 

private quarrels. Even the pacifist Daily News, in the 
glut of national discord and fighting, summons Lord 
Northclifie to battle, charging him with appealing to our 
lower instincts, whilst it itself is actually appealing to the 
fighting instinct in him, trying to get him to throw back 
words of abuse. There is a desire for fighting hidden in 
the breasts of everyone except a few ascetics and saints 
and poets in every nation, except in a few tribes of tent- 
dwellers, nomads, or cavemen. Under the crust even of 
America lies sleeping force, the desire and the need to 
burst forth and fight and devour, like the fire in the 
depths of the earth. 

"What, then, of Christ's promise ?'' ask the Tol- 
stoyans and the Quakers and the Plymouth Brothers. 
"What chance has Christianity of coming to any- 
thing?'' 

My answer is : every chance. Christianity is not for 
nations, it is for individuals. It is an individual under- 
standing. It is not a rule. It is a personal choice. 
The peace that Christianity gives is the inner peace, 
the peace in the depths of the heart even when the 
outer world is full of war. In fact, the greater the 
tumult of the outside world the greater is the miracle 
of Christianity. As the promise says: "My peace I 
give unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto 
youy 

The Tennysonian and Victorian — 

"The Earth at last a warless world" 



28o RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

is a popularisation of Christianity, and much easier to 
give assent to, and to work for, than the truer 
"The heart at last a peaceful heart." 

But to turn from the individual back again to the 
world, I think that when the war is over we shall indeed 
set to work to maintain a larger army and give more 
opportunities to youth to ride and shoot and perform 
the manly exercises. We ought to popularise imperial 
service and give f acihties to our young men and women 
to see the Empire, and work for periods at different 
points in it. We need to make imperial service more 
interesting, we need to make it as interesting as it really 
is. We need to say nationally and individually that 
position in life is not the first thing, earning a livingis not 
the first thing, commerce is not the first thing, that all 
these things are added if you have first the will to serve 
an ideal. No compulsion upon individuals is in keeping 
with the British spirit of freedom. But the prospect 
of imperial service should be so glorious that everyone 
should wish to come in of his own free will, and Quakers 
and Tolstoyans who wished not to carry the gun might 
still find an immense amount of scope on the positive 
side in the making of bridges and the carrying of the 
messages of love and interest from one part of the 
British Empire to another. Once more we look to 
those who come back from the war to give us, from their 
hearts, the wisdom which they have learned in the hours 
of facing death for their country. 



LAST THOUGHTS 



V. LAST THOUGHTS 

I 

Petrograd 

I HAVE been in St. Petersburg for the first time in my 
life, or rather I have never been in St. Petersburg at 
all, I have only been in Petrograd. Although I have 
been almost everywhere else in the Russian Empire I 
have always avoided the capital, expecting no pleasure 
there, no revelation of Russia. And wherever I have 
gone in Russia people have solemnly advised me that it 
would never be worth while to go to St. Petersburg, and 
they have rejoiced to hear that I never intended to go. 
As Merezhkovsky wrote: ^^The life of St. Petersburg 
is the death of Russia, and conversely the death of 
St. Petersburg might be the life of Russia.'' Behold, 
St. Petersburg is dead ! Petrograd has taken its place. 
As the poet Aksakoff wrote : 

"Its name was a foreign one ; 
That's why we never remember it." 

When first the new name was spoken it seemed annoy- 
ing that it should rhyme with retrograd, but the pun was 
not apposite. The name St. Petersburg sounds sinis- 
ter, grown old in sin ; nothing sounds more childlike, 
young and simple than Petrograd. 

283 



284 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

The sun did not, however, shine on Petrograd for 
me, nor did the new sentiment transfigure the dreariness 
and sordidness of the great city. A moving mist was 
driving over the house-tops, and through it came a 
drizzle of finest snow or rain. The raw, penetrating 
air made one nervously cold. The streets were wet 
and slippery, and the wood pavements were old and 
worn and muddy. Every passer-by was muffled and 
silent. I went down the vaunted Nevski Prospect, 
one of the greatest streets of the world. Its houses, 
shops and blocks are of unharmonised heights and 
colours, disorderly in bulk and in design, with no spaces 
between the houses, and with window-fronts greedily 
absorbent of wall. Such an anomaly as the Singer 
building, an American advertisement in stone, can find 
a place in the same road with the covered arcades that 
take their inspiration from the bazars of the East, and 
with great blocks of Government buildings the colour 
of fire-glow in the sky or of muddy water mixed with 
blood. It is a fine, long, straight, flat, wide street with 
electric standards along the middle, with car lines each 
side of the standards and red-striped trams pottering 
along, with diversified bunches of horse droschkies trot- 
ting forward, with coughing, swift-moving motor-cars, 
and antique baronial carriages having scarlet-clad 
coachmen sitting on their boxes. Bits of the street 
feel like Paris, bits like the East end of London, bits 
like Broadway, New York, but collectively it is some- 



PETROGRAD 285 

thing unique, something sinister and gloomy, brutal 
and out of date. 

It is the city of Dostoieffsky^s novels, the scene 
especially of Crime and Punishment and the nightmares 
of Raskolnikof. It is the scene of that wonderful, 
tender novel Injured and Insulted, the scene also of Le 
Double, where the hypochondriac, leaning tired against 
a bridge over one of the canals, saw himself go past 
himself in the driving blizzard of snow. What sin 
there has been in this city, what meanness, sordidness, 
unhappiness! This hitherto haK-German city! Six- 
teen thousand Germans were sent out of it in one week 
whilst I was there. St. Petersburg — Petrograd; yes, 
it is good tidings. 

There has been a much stronger German influence 
there than in London. Germans at court, Germans in 
business, above all things Germans or naturaUsed Ger- 
mans in the secret poHce. They should get rid of 
them all; denaturalise and disenfranchise those who 
are Russian subjects. They have been poisoning the 
national Hfe. They are a great danger to the State. 
Their intrigues and machinations are words now, but if 
not checked might amount to actions later on. The 
Tsar's life is especially precious at this moment, not 
only to Russia but to England and France. He has 
come out unreservedly as the leader of his people and 
the promulgator of the war. He has trebled the 
strength of his army by the vodka ukase and by his 



286 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

consistently strong decisive personal behaviour. And 
all the while he has the haunting personal sorrow — 
the weakness of his heir. It is difficult to view with 
calm the presence at Petrograd of such men as the 
notorious Reinbot, once chief of the Moscow poHce. 
May the capital have a complete purge ! 

My eyes discover the dead St. Petersburg. I go to 
Vassily Island where poor Dostoievsky Hved in poverty. 
The dank and dirty water of the Neva and the canals 
suggests the suicide to my mind. But though the dead 
past is so evident the young present is also insistent. 
Petrograd is there. The spirit shops are sealed. Half the 
private-chamber restaurants are shut. In all shops and 
public places there are notices up requesting you not 
to speak German. Bright-faced young men and women 
dart about with picture post cards and newspapers, 
and call to you as you pass by, "Buy the news for warm 
clothing." At first you do not understand, but later 
you learn that the proceeds of the sales go to provide 
warm clothing for the men at the front. Then you 
understand the large placard everywhere exhibited, 
the touching reminder to the townsfolk of the capital. 
Everywhere you go you see the words 

it's cold in the trenches 

There are five or six new evening newspapers on the 
streets, and they are bought na raskvat, like hot pies. 
Crowds stand all day outside the offices of the Novoe 



PETROGRAD 287 

Vremya watching for the new telegrams, which, as 
soon as they are received, are posted up. There is 
tremendous interest in the daily news, especially 
in the doings of the Russian Army and of the British 
Fleet. Away in the background somewhere the Tsar 
waits for news also, and receives it first of all before 
any of his people, and if it is great news he orders that 
it be given out at once. Then all the papers come out 
with extra sheets, and in the theatres the favourites 
of the crowd come forward and stop the orchestra. 
^^One moment, one moment, please; a great victory 
in Poland. . . . God save the Tsar ! " 



n 

Returning from Russia to England 

As I had determined to return to London for a while 
I had to come to Petrograd. There I had to decide 
whether I would take the risk of the Scandinavian 
route, or whether I would go to Archangel and return 
on a New York liner that called at Liverpool. By 
most accounts the North Sea was closed, and there was 
no traffic between Norway and England except by 
boats going north of Iceland. However, the ticket 
agents averred that the way was still open, and I be- 
lieved them, and they were right. Still, it was a most 
difficult and unpleasant journey, full of unexpected 
vexations and troublous doubts, relieved only by the 
hope and the coming joy of seeing my country again. 

Into the fast Finnish train starting so late one night 
from Petrograd, and away towards the Gulf of Bothnia 
shore, the engine screaming hke a sea-gull ! The train 
runs all night long, and in the morning we emerge into 
a new country with a new landscape — Finland. A 
melancholy and yet beautiful country. 

Snow-covered fields, cold wooden houses with 
pointed gables, red-painted chalets, an upland country 
on which Jack Frost has breathed. Vast shadowy 

288 



RETURNING TO ENGLAND 289 

lakes to which the lowering and tumultuous black 
sky leans down. There is a sadness beyond words, but 
it is a country to love tenderly. Far away lies the 
black other side of the lake looking like the end of 
the lake's life. We love things that are limited — all 
mortal things like flowers, humans, little lakes — much 
more than we love stars, gods, seas. We are tender 
to all that dies, that has an ending or a limit or another 
side. 

It is an individual country this Finland. The high 
white stone buildings, compact, many-pointed, bleak, 
are a reflection of jaggedness and ice. There is also 
a jaggedness in people's faces. 

An accurate people the Finns, efiicient, orderly, 
Protestant. They have their backs to Russia and look 
towards Germany and Scandinavia. One feels that 
they have a national destiny within the Russian Empire. 
It was worth while to get a ghmpse of the people, if only 
on a two-day journey in their country. 

We had to stay forty-two hours at Raumo on the 
coast — the port of embarkation for Sweden. We 
arrived at four in the afternoon, and instead of the train 
proceeding direct to the harbour it stopped at the town. 
We were informed that the three Swedish boats in the 
harbour were packed with Germans thrown out of 
Russia. We should have to go to an hotel. The 
hotels were all full ; it was necessary to seek a hostess 
in a private house. 



290 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Next morning, while it was yet dark, we had to get 
up, hire sledges, and pelt through a blinding snowstorm 
to the pier, where a boat was supposed to be waiting for 
us. At the pier we found yesterday's steamer still 
loading and in no hurry to go out. A boat would come 
for us some time in the afternoon. Meanwhile our 
trunks were opened and all correspondence was seized 
and examined so as to prevent letters being taken 
abroad '^behind the Censor's back.'' A boat came in 
and we were given cabins. Next day, about eleven 
o'clock in the morning, we steamed out of the harbour, 
led by a pilot. 

What a boat that was ! It was packed with German 
refugees from stem to stern. Germans on the decks, 
in all the passages, in the saloons and eating-rooms, 
crying, shouting, jesting. Directly we got out of 
Russian waters it was possible to buy lager beer and 
spirits, and the Germans appreciated the situation. 
As one old drunken fellow said : 

'^Im Petersburg nicht wodka, nicht bier, nicht 
schnapps, nicht wein, nicht nitchevo niet." 

All food and drink in the boat was, however, at star- 
vation price, and the Swedes spoke no language but 
their own, and gave wrong change. 



We arrived at Stockholm, a bright and stately city, 
at three in the morning, and. submitted to the Swedish 



RETURNING TO ENGLAND 291 

Customs. The German refugees were met by the rep- 
resentatives of their own nation and by a dozen motor- 
cars. They were packed into the cars, a dozen in each, 
and taken off to some EvangeHsche Mission to have hot 
coffee and sleep a few hours. At 4.30 a.m. the Customs 
closed and I took a taxi-cab to the locked railway 
station ; after some banging I was admitted by a porter. 
The train to Christiania went at 8.38 a.m. This train 
had only second and third class compartments, but I 
travelled with two Russians who had booked first-class 
tickets. We telegraphed to Christiania to reserve 
seats in the next train to Bergen, but arrived two hours 
late and had to spend the night at Christiania. 

Christiania seemed a much dirtier city than London, 
if London were all East End. Its traffic is horse traffic, 
and the streets seem to be seldom cleaned. There was 
a pea-soup London fog and a penetrating raw air. 

Next day, after a night in a cold hotel, I was informed 
that all second-class seats in the Bergen train were 
taken. I had no objection to third class, so long as 
I got there; but I was rather amused to find that I 
must pay six crowns for a sleeping berth in the third 
class, even though I had a second-class ticket. Next 
to me in this train was a Chinese British subject from 
Hong Kong. He had a first-class ticket, and had 
paid something like £1 5s. extra for the privilege of 
going in a third-class sleeping car. True, they had 
given him a carriage to himself. But then that rich 



292 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

Chinaman was tapped in an extraordinary way ; money 

flowed from him Hke water at every place he changed. 

******* 

At Bergen things were a little better. We all got 
the cabins for which we had tickets. But the more 
dangerous part of the journey commenced. The danger 
to civilians was a little heightened by the fact that we 
had on board five British naval officers and fifty marines, 
who had been wrecked off the coast of Norway, but 
had managed to leave the country as civilians. They 
momentarily expected the approach of a German 
cruiser, and, indeed, knew that there was a German 
submarine near Stavanger that had intelligence of their 
movements. At Stavanger they were all ordered to keep 
to their cabins, and not show their faces for a moment 
above deck. 

It was rough weather. There were only three women 
passengers. We saw the noses of several floating 
mines. Many people slept in their life-belts, and we 
all balanced the idea of a sudden explosion, and a 
plunge into the cold sea, or a rush to the boats. We 
were forty-eight hours on the sea, and the last morning 
was one of mist and fog-horns. British torpedo-boats 
rushed past us like monsters with their tails in the sea. 
Black torpedo-destroyers steamed round us. At last 
Tynemouth became visible like a shadow, the fleet 
enclosed us, a little boat drew up to us, and a man, with 
his hands to his mouth, cried out in a stentorian voice : 



RETURNING TO ENGLAND 293 

" Get your passports ready ! " 

The Russians on board at once fumbled in their 
pockets for their passports. It was a familiar order to 
them. The British officers below, now in their uni- 
forms, drank champagne. The sick recovered at the 
thought of England. 

"Any revolvers, any letters you are trying to take 
past the Censor, anything to declare? What is your 
occupation? What have you been doing in Russia? 
What is your English address ?'' 

"You can go." 

Yes. Dear England once again. Newcastle, the 
Scotch express, London, dark London. My word, how 
dark ! How difficult to get there from Russia! 

Britain is great on the sea. All sea adventures touch 
us, and even the smallest details of the life of our men 
are interesting. How tantalising it is that the present 
vast activity of our fleet and the men on it is without 
its story. The only time when news becomes explicit is 
when we are told that a ship has been sunk and some 
of our brave fellows are dead. I have here a true story 
of one of the shipwrecked naval officers whom we took 
on board on my journey home from Bergen to New- 
castle. It gives an idea of the strangeness and pathos 
and almost feverish activity of the lives of all our gallant 
sailors in this war. 

On the first afternoon when I came aboard I was 



294 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

surprised to see among the passengers one Englishman 
wearing a Russian fur hat and another with an Arch- 
angel reindeer coat. There were several civilians who 
kept gathering in knots, talking mysteriously and then 
separating whenever anyone came near them. When 
questioned as to where they had come from they talked 
vaguely of the beauty of Mexico and then of the fiords, 
hinting that if there were light they would Hke to take 
some snapshots at Stavanger. 

They were a captain and officers who had been on 
the ill-fated W which sunk off the North of Nor- 
way, and they were disguised as civilians in case a Ger- 
man cruiser should come up and revise our passengers 
and cargo. Not until we had been twelve hours out 
at sea did they let us others know their story. 

They had escorted the Canadian ice-breakers to 
Archangel, the ice-breakers that it was hoped would 
keep the Great Northern port open all the winter. At 
Archangel they had waited five weeks, always expecting 
to be returning on the morrow. At last they got orders 
to sail as passengers on the British tramp steamer 
W . Seven days after leaving Archangel the cap- 
tain of the W entrusted his ship to an uncertificated 

pilot — the latter led them over a sunken rock. 

It was at supper time, when everyone was gaily chat- 
ting and eating, that the crash came and the whole 
bottom of the ship went to shivers. Everyone thought 
they had struck a mine. The passengers darted to 



RETURNING TO ENGLAND 295 

their cabins and put on their life-belts, and stepped off 
the vessel into the ice and snow of the sea. A light- 
house was near and they scrambled over ledges and 
let themselves down over icy precipices into pools of 
melting ice and icy water, and so reached the shelter. 
For twenty-four hours they shivered on this Hghthouse 
and sent up rockets. At last a Norwegian post boat 
hailed them and took them off to Trondhjem, where 
they were at once put under arrest. Eventually they 
were allowed to return to England — thanks to the 
courtesy of the Norwegian Government. All the British 
naval men were saved and not only they but the cap- 
tain's black cat, Tim. Tim was a great favourite 
on our journey from Bergen to Newcastle, and many 
of the sailors thought om* safety depended absolutely 
upon him. 

The officers were some of the most interesting 
Enghshmen I have met, gentle, calm, firm, never vulgar. 
I realised that in such men as they lay Britain's true 
strength. My especial friend of the journey was a 
young lieutenant who was most eager for England and 
the Empire. Above all things he admired Canada 
and the spirit of the Canadians, and he promised him- 
self that when the war was over he would marry and 
settle down in British Columbia. I wish London 
would always remember that when one of her sons 
leaves her and goes to a place like British Columbia, 
he is not lost to Britain : he belongs to Britain even 



296 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

more out there than he could at home. His heart 
beats for her ; his arm is ready at her service. 

"We were off the shore of Mexico when the war 
broke out," said he. "We received orders to proceed 
at once to Victoria, B.C. I was very glad. My 
sweetheart Hves there, and we have been engaged two 
years. I thought 'now is my chance, we'll get married 
at once.' But when I got to Victoria another order 
was awaiting us. We had eight hours in which to pack 
our things to go to Halifax. I saw my girl for just 
one hour before departure. But I thought, 'Halifax is 
not far, I can come back and marry her.' But when 
we got to Hahfax what was my astonishment to find 
that we were under orders to proceed at once to Arch- 
angel. It took my breath away; it was such an 
unlikely destination. I had barely heard of the place 
before. We escorted certain ships (the ice-breakers, I 
feel sure) to Archangel, accomplished the journey 
safely, and when we arrived at the northern port of 
Russia the Russian Government made us presents, the 
captain three hundred roubles, each of us one hundred 
roubles and each of the men thirty roubles. Yes, they 
were very hospitable to us also, and it was interesting 
to see the life of Archangel, but we were all crazy to 

rejoin the fleet. We were put on the ill-fated W 

and were wrecked, taken through Norway, and put on 
this ship. When we get to Newcastle we shall find new 
orders awaiting us. I hope to see my father in London. 



RETURNING TO ENGLAND 297 

IVe been three years away from home, and no one has 
the least idea where I am or whether I am ahve or 
dead." 

How excited everyone was when at last we entered 
British waters, and the officers put off their mixed 
British and Russian attire and donned their uniforms 
of bhie cloth and gilt braid. The ship hummed with 
boyish excitement. At Newcastle all the kit that the 

men had saved from the W was brought up first, 

and the officers and men went off before any of the 
other passengers. The orders at Newcastle were that 
they should travel direct to London and report them- 
selves at the Admiralty. A second order came directing 
that my lieutenant should not stay at London, but 
should go direct to Portsmouth and take with him the 
marines. 

I found him in the train from Newcastle. He was 
appallingly excited and tired, and had deep black circles 
below his eyes. "Isn't it hard luck?'' said he. "I 
haven't seen my people for three years, and now I 
have to go straight on to Portsmouth. I was so pleased 
to think we were to be in London for some days. 
You know you can telephone from Newcastle to London. 
It costs three-and-sixpence, but isn't it a miracle. I 
rang up my father. Just picked up the receiver, put 
it to my ears, and called into the tube : ^ Is that you, 
father?' I could hear the old man gasp, hear the 
shuffle of his feet. . . . 



298 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

'^^Is that you, my son?' 

"'Yes, I am at Newcastle, just arrived, and am 
coming to London. . . .' 

"What a sweet moment it was! And then I had 
scarcely put the receiver back again on its hook when 
I was handed the Admiralty telegram to the effect that I 
was to catch the 5 a.m. train at Waterloo, and not let 
the men out of my sight till they were safely bestowed 
in one of the vessels of the fleet. We have to keep a 
sharp eye on them, they Ve plenty of money and would 
be off drinking if they got a chance. . . J^ 

This, perhaps, gives a glimpse of the life of the de- 
fenders of our shores. Someone came into me the other 
evening and I asked, "What news is there?'' 

"Only a British warship sunk," was the reply. 
Only! And only a few hundred brave and loving and 
patriotic men like my lieutenant drowned, men with 
sweethearts and homes and an undying love of their 
country. Let us remember always that the Empire is in 
the hands of heroes. 



So I find myself in London. My first impression 
is one of gloom. Business wishes to be as usual, but 
cannot quite manage it. The ragtimes have stopped ; 
the barrel organs play national anthems instead. There 
is not so much laughter, not so many witticisms, many 
more serious faces. There is depression owing to the 



RETURNING TO ENGLAND 299 

absence of news.* Squads of mixed sizes of recruits go 
by in unwonted looking khaki suits and the passers-by 
give no cheers. Darkness at night, and the lurid eyes 
of the searchlights on the Thames. 

But looking further, I am aware of a great optimism 
and a renewed national vigour. The people who can 
really help England are at the fore; those who are 
frauds, self-seekers, mere self- advertisers, have fallen out. 
There is a brisk breeze blowing against the cobwebs 
of lazy habit. Forces are beating against the snobbism 
in our State departments, education, social life. 

Thousands of people breathe a prayer of this sort: 
"I hope the war won't end till England has been 
thoroughly wakened up. I hope the war won't de- 
generate into a sort of triumphal procession for us. 
I only hope the Germans will keep their end up till we 
get a thorough shaking- up." 

Everyone sees gain ahead for England if only the 
war be hard enough and long enough for us. Yet at 
the same time it seemed strange to me when I first 
came back to hear the opinions of Londoners : — 

^^It all depends on the Russians. We are waiting 
for them." 

* With regard to the policy of Censorship, those in authority should re- 
member that aU that is suppressed now will burst out with fury when the 
war is over, or when some great disaster breaks down the Censorship. 
Out will come the scandals, the mistakes, the bitternesses, all intensified. 
That is why there is depression now ; the man in the street cannot discharge 
his feelings day by day. 



300 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

"We hold them on the Aisne; we shall starve them 
out.'' 

"It is money will tell in the end; we shall finish 
them with silver bullets." 

To which opinions I necessarily replied: "The 
Russians cannot do much yet on German soil. War- 
saw is going to be in danger off and on all the winter. 
Directly the Russians begin fighting on German soil, 
they are up against German science, German railways, 
German technical superiority. The Russians have a 
much harder task than French and English on the 
other side. You must depend on yourselves if you are 
going to win properly. When once you force the hands 
of the Germans on the west, Russia will follow heavily 
in the east. Everything depends on prosecuting the 
war with vigour. 

As for starving the Germans out, don't believe it. 
It can't be done. The Germans, with their extraor- 
dinary gift for organisation, and their accuracy and 
discipline, will easily organise their internal trade and 
their country of Germany (including conquered Bel- 
gium) ; and they can live in a state of war for a whole 
era like the Romans. The more time you give the 
Germans the more difficult it will be to crush them. 
They are a hard people ; there is little give in them. 

And as for winning by force of money, that is a poor 
foolish materialism. Nothing can be won by money. 
It is almost a truism to say that men fight more cour- 



RETURNING TO ENGLAND 301 

ageously when they have lost everything. The more 
faith in money we have, the less hkely are we to endure 
to the end. 

A few weeks after I had returned, the absolute re- 
liance upon Russia began to slacken, and a good new 
faith began to appear, faith in ourselves. 

"If you want a thing well done, do it yourself, 
John!" and England began to prosecute the war with 
increasing energy, both on land and on sea. News of 
victory in Galicia was received thankfully, but was not 
regarded as having the peculiar significance of being 
Hkely to relieve the situation on the Aisne. I began 
to hear the true whisper: "We could beat them our- 
selves," 



Ill 

Not Too Loud 

Down in our East End in the sweated labour dens, 
women are busy making flappers and squeakers and 
tiddlers and feathers and what not for the celebration 
of peace. Even German Jews are engaged in the 
business and are making a considerable speculation 
upon our mafhcking again. If peace is postponed too 
long then these wares will be put forth on the occasion 
of great victories or the German evacuation of the 
Belgian cities. 

There will be room to be joyful. Our populace 
will want to shout and get drunk and throw confetti 
about and make a great noise. And yet I hope the 
noise will not be too loud and that those of us who 
are quiet-souled will not be too much upset by the 
clamour. If all the public-houses and off-license places 
could be shut for a week during the peace celebrations, 
or on days when we rejoice over victory, I imagine the 
noise would be of a more tolerable quality. Perhaps, 
however, the sweaters in the East End are making a 
miscalculation. We shall be quiet in our joy. So 
many more of us this time will have lost brothers in 

302 



NOT TOO LOUD 303 

the war, so many families will have the remembrance 
of great sorrow, and England will be in black. 

Those who have perished will also rejoice with us in 
the victory and in peace. They will look down as the 
stars look — serenely. A verse of Alfred Noyes gives 
the thought : 

"When the last post sounds 

And the night is on the battlefield, 
Night and rest at last from all the 

tumult of our dreams, 
WiU it not be well with us, 

Veterans, veterans, 
li with duty done like yours we lie beneath 

the stars." 

The day of peace is one when every man should 
go to Holy Communion and eat and drink the Bread 
and Wine of those who have suffered and died for 
us all, and so enter into communion with their spirits 
and their passion. Do not let them die or think that 
they are dead. Find them again, find them again ! 

We are accustomed to think of the Germans as coarse 
and brutal, and yet we may upon occasion learn tender- 
ness from them. One of the most touching things I 
remember reading of the Germans was the way the news 
of the fall of Antwerp was received in one of their 
theatres. A pohtical play called ^^1914'' was being 
performed. It was about half-past ten at night, when 
suddenly the manager came on to the stage, interrupting 
the players and the orchestra, and crying out : 



304 RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 

"One moment, one moment, gentlemen; Antwerp 
has fallen/' 

There was tremendous excitement among the audi- 
ence, the waving of arms, cheering, shouting, singing, 
the singing of "Deutschland over all'' and "The 
Watch on the Rhine." Then suddenly the manager 
came forward again and imposed silence by his lifted 
hand. Following him came the chorus singing in a 
remonstrant tone this beautiful song : 

Nicht zu laut ! 

Nicht zu laut ! 
Denkt g'rad jetzt wo Ihr jubelt und lacht ; 

Nicht zu laut ! 

Nicht zu laut ! 
Fiel ein krieger vielleicht in der Schlacht 
Und er liegt beim zerschossenen Pferde 
Und nimmt abschied von Mutter und Braut — 

Nicht zu laut ! 

Nicht zu laut ! 

which may be read in English : 

Not too loud ! ' 

Not too loud ! 
Think just now whilst you laugh and cheer ; 

Not too loud ! 

Not too loud ! 
How out on the battlefield dark and drear 
A soldier lies dying, his dead steed beside, 
And bids farewell to mother and bride — 

Not too loud ! 

Not too loud ! 



NOT TOO LOUD 305 

Which might also be the motto of our remonstrance 
and our hope in the noisy hours of triumph. Not too 
loud ! There in the dust where the enemy is lying, 
but for the grace of God England might be lying too. 



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With Poor Immigrants to America 

By STEPHEN GRAHAM 

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"We collected on the quay at Liverpool — English, Russians, Jews, 
Germans, Swedes, Finns. . . . Three hundred yards out in the harbor 
stood the red funneled Cunarder which was to bear us to America. . . ." 
The beginning of the voyage is thus described, a voyage during which 
the reader sees life from a new angle. The trip across is, however, but 
the forerunner of even more interesting days. Stephen Graham has 
the spirit of the real adventurer and the story of his intimate association 
with the immigrants is an intensely human and dramatic narrative, valu- 
able both as literature and as a sympathetic interpretation of a move- 
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"Mr. Graham has the spirit of the real adventurer. He prefers 
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which most writers know only by hearsay, and interesting bits of this 
life and that which is picturesque and romantic and unlooked for he 
transcribes to paper with a freshness and vividness that mark him a 
good mixer with men, a keen observer and a skillful adept with the 



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The journey of the Russian peasants to Jerusalem has never been 
described before in any language, not even in Russian. Yet it is the 
most significant thing in the Russian life of to-day. In the story lies a 
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it also clearly ranks him as the best modern writer of the saga of vaga- 
bondage." — N, V. Times. 

" Mr. Graham has written an intensely interesting book, one that is 
a delightful mixture of description, impression, and delineation of a pe- 
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" The book is beautifully produced, illustrated with thirty-eight ex- 
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